MICHELE NORRIS, host:
The Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel gives advice to the executive branch. It's also been at the center of some huge controversies recently. For example, it was lawyers there who wrote the memos during the Bush administration to justify harsh interrogation methods, such as waterboarding. Now, the Obama administration is trying for a second time to find a suitable leader for office.
Today, President Obama nominated Washington lawyer Virginia Seitz, as NPR's Carrie Johnson reports.
CARRIE JOHNSON: The recent history at the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel is filled with disappointment. It's been seven years since the office had a leader confirmed by the Senate, something that veterans like Walter Dellinger shake their heads at.
Professor WALTER DELLINGER (Former Assistant Attorney General in charge of the Office of Legal Counsel): OLC, as we've all learned from the torture memos, is a critically important office. And it is striking - indeed, almost shocking -that since I left as the confirmed head of OLC 14 years ago, for fewer than three of those 14 years has there been a confirmed person head of the Office of Legal Counsel.
JOHNSON: Indiana law professor Dawn Johnsen was the Obama administration's first nominee for the job. But Johnsen stepped aside in April, after months of waiting in vain for the Senate to vote on her nomination. Republicans thought she was too liberal on national security issues. They used articles she wrote during the Bush years to prove it.
Now, the White House is trying again by nominating Virginia Seitz. She's a former Rhodes Scholar and a onetime Supreme Court clerk for Justice Brennan. And if Virginia Seitz isn't a household name, her law partner Peter Keisler says, she should be, because of a Friend of the Court brief she wrote in an affirmative action case a few years ago.
Mr. PETER KEISLER (Partner, Sidley Austin LLP): It was one of the most influential amicus briefs probably in the history of the court.
JOHNSON: During that time, Seitz represented a group of retired military officers. They told the Supreme Court that service members perform better because they take diversity into account. Justice Sandra Day O'Connor cited that argument in the court's landmark opinion in 2003.
But Seitz is known within legal circles for something else, too. Earlier in her career, she quietly blazed a trail for others who might want to work part-time while raising their children.
Here's Keisler.
Mr. KEISLER: She's really actually been a pioneer in demonstrating that you can have a hugely successful first-tier law practice while working part time.
JOHNSON: Seitz left her first law firm, Keisler says, because they offered to continue her part-time arrangement. But the firm, he says, refused to extend that same deal to other lawyers and Seitz thought that was unfair. So she walked.
That sense of conviction would help Seitz at the Office of Legal Counsel, which sometimes must say no to powerful people in the White House.
Jack Goldsmith ran the office during the Bush administration when he stood up to the White House and objected to a warrantless-wiretapping program.
Professor JACK GOLDSMITH (Former Assistant Attorney General for the Office of Legal Counsel): It's important that there be a Senate-confirmed person at the head of the Office of Legal Counsel, because it helps secure the independence of the office when it's making legal judgments and because it helps give the office more authority, both within the Justice Department and throughout the government.
JOHNSON: Seitz has little experience in national security, an issue that might pose a problem in her confirmation. But the Justice Department will hire a deputy who has a background in those issues, and that satisfies Goldsmith.
Prof. GOLDSMITH: The truth is that all these issues are legal issues, and there are a lot of experts. And so I don't think that sort of prior expertise in national security law is a prerequisite for the job.
JOHNSON: The most important thing, Goldsmith says, is that the leader be a careful lawyer and have good judgment.
Carrie Johnson, NPR News, Washington.