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Justice lawyers salute NY Solicitor General Bansal

Asian Americans belonging to virtually every bureau and division of the Department of Justice were on hand last month to felicitate New York Solicitor General Preeta D Bansal as part of the department's celebration of Asian Pacific American Heritage Month.

Also gracing the occasion to honor Bansal -- one of the most powerful Asian American public servants in the country -- and present her with a special Asian American achievement award bestowed upon her by the Asian American attorneys at the DOJ and its affiliates,was the new Deputy Attorney General, Larry Thompson, who had been confirmed by the Senate only a day earlier.

The organizers said they were honoring Bansal -- a DOJ alumnus who served as counselor to Assistant Attorney General Joel Klein of the Antitrust Division who became famous when he took on Microsoft for anti-trust violations -- because she had made all Asian American attorneys committed to public service proud by her achievements at a relatively young age (she is in her early 30s) and was a perfect role model for younger members of the community who were contemplating serving the public in either federal, state or county governments.

Bansal, who was appointed to her present position in February 1999, by New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer, helps oversee a staff of 600 attorneys in the department of law, and directly supervises 45 lawyers in the solicitor general's office who handle appeals for the state of New York and its agencies in state and federal courts.

In addition, Bansal's office prepares formal and informal opinions for the New York state attorney general, and provides advice and consultation on legal and constitutional issues to the attorney general, to other bureaus and divisions in the department of law, and to state agencies.

Before her stint with Klein, she served as counsel in the department's Office of Policy Development and prior to that as special counsel in the White House Counsel's Office.

A Harvard Law School alumnus, Bansal served as a law clerk to Justice John Paul Stevens of the US Supreme Court and to Chief Judge James L Oakes of the US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit.

In her keynote address in The Great Hall of the Main Justice Building, which was preceded by an armed forces color guard by the United States army and remarks by Thompson, Bansal said she was eternally indebted to her years at the DOJ, as it had held her in good stead since she took over as New York's solicitor general.

Besides helping her to value the importance of making "government efficient, responsive, accountable, honest," Bansal said, "My time at DOJ was most valuable for me as a person."

Bansal, who immigrated to the US at age three, joked, "My family came to that hotbed of Asian Pacific American activity in Lincoln, Nebraska." She spoke of how she attended a high school, "where I was the only non-blonde," and recalled how in such an environment "there isn't a lot of freedom to really explore your cultural identity, to really get comfortable," with race or ethnicity.

"With that came certain advantages and certain costs," she noted. "The cost obviously are that I didn't get in touch with my unique cultural attributes until much later in life."

"But on the positive side," she said, "I really learnt not to treat people through a prism of race or ethnicity."

She said, "I learnt early in life and this is something I continue to believe in today, that how we deal with society as a whole and how we project ourselves as a person is how we are perceived by others."

Bansal -- who was valedictorian at the Lincoln East High School, received more than 200 national speaking and debating awards at high school, was a US presidential scholar, and was named Nebraska Youth of the Year -- said, "If my sense of my identity is first and foremost as American, then that's the way others see me. But if I feel like a foreigner and see another person through the lens of how it feels like a foreigner, that would be projected and they will treat me as a foreigner."

"I guess for whatever reasons of background, upbringing, I had always learnt to believe in... and stress the similarities I have with people around me, rather than the differences," she said, though acknowledging,"that's not to say the differences don't exist."

However, she argued that the similarities "each of us as individuals have as wives, daughters, sisters, husbands, whatever,and these roles and those relationships that form, transcend the ethnicities, races,whatever."

"So I think in terms of my individual experience, that is something I learnt at a very personal level."

Bansal exhorted Asian Americans to be the catalyst in helping "to be part of the transformation of society," and quoting Mohandas Gandhi, whom she described as "one of my great heroes," said, "We have to become the change that we will see in the world."

She said Asian Americans could bring "unique attributes to the table -- our incredible sense of family bonds, that is something very special for Asian Americans. Also, our incredible commitment to education,hard work, and a great appreciation of diversity because our cultures are so diverse, languages, religions, ethnicities, nationalities."

Bansal emphasized that "kind of appreciation is something we can inject to the larger society," and coupled with "us as lawyers, our sense of justice, commitment to the rule of law, an appreciation of others' viewpoint, the ability to argue both sides of a question," Asian American lawyers could hold their own and inject these perspectives to any public debate, be they political debates or debates on race and ethnicity.

Earlier, Thompson echoed the message by President George W Bush about how much Asian Americans had helped to enrich the country. He noted that Asian Americans contribute 3.7 per cent of the DOJ's permanent workforce "and the department must continue to work on increasing our representation of Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders."

Thompson said he and Attorney General John Ashcroft are committed to seeing that the DOJ workforce "is representative of all segments of our country."

It is important for us in the DOJ if we are going to gain the trust and confidence of all citizens of our country," he added.

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