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If stripes could be earned for combat duty in
the politics of Washington, D.C., Bill Howard (’77)
would have earned them. For the past 17 years, Howard
has been at the front lines of many battles where law
and politics collide.
Since 1990, Howard has served as Senior
Litigation Counsel for the Justice Department’s
office of Immigration Litigation. His work involves
him in a wide variety of class-action and individual
Federal suits on "counter terrorism" and national
security projects.
His cases are the kind that end up
on the nightly news, as he defends the government’s
position to exclude aliens who are a threat to national
security, are involved in terrorist related activities,
or are convicted of serious crimes. "The work is
extremely interesting," he says. "but unfortunately
it’s all classified, and so I can’t really
tell you about it."
Before Howard began litigating against
terrorism, he had served under appointment by President
Ronald Reagan as General Counsel to the U.S. Commission
on Civil Rights, when it was a hotbed of controversy.
Howard therefore knows there’s truth in the old
saw about the difference between terrorists and liberal
ideologies – you can negotiate with terrorists.
Howard fought to serve Reagan’s
interests in promoting equal opportunity and opposing
rights based on group membership – a position greatly
at odds with the powerful civil rights establishment.
Howard was protected by Civil Rights Chairman Clarence
Pendleton, who had promoted him through the ranks at
the commission from staff attorney in 1984 to General
Counsel in 1987.
"Pendleton suffered greatly for
his views, but heroically and without complaint,"
says Howard. "The civil rights groups vilified
him especially, because he was an African-American committed
to a color blind society." Suffering without complaint
soon became a virtue of Howard’s,
Of the eight Commissioners, four were
appointed by the President, four by Democratic controlled
Congress. "I was at the eye of the hurricane,"
Howard says. But in 1988, Pendleton died unexpectedly,
and in 1989 a nervous Bush Administration came to power
and appointed new Commissioners who abandoned the policies
that Howard had been charged to defend. Howard was then
left not in the hurricane’s eye – but twisting
in the wind. Howard thereafter found haven as a career
attorney in the Justice Department’s immigration
division.
Howard had gone to Washington shortly
after graduating from Notre Dame Law School in 1980.
He sees how "much of the beating our culture takes
emanates from D.C." But it doesn’t discourage
him. Quoting from Pope John Paul II, he observes: "What
an extraordinary hour of history we have been granted
to live in. What important tasks Christ has entrusted
to us. He is calling each of us to prepare the new springtime
of the Church."
Howard currently lives in suburban
Herndon, Virginia, with his wife, Trese, and their two
children, Will (age 11) and Christy (age 9). In addition
to their parish activities, the Howards are active in
running Holy Family Academy, and independent Catholic
elementary school.
Looking back, Howard is quick to credit
his time of formation at the College. The College made
me a far better Catholic, far better citizen, far better
attorney, and far better husband and father." He
says, "My four years at the College were absolutely
fabulous – there is no other school like it anywhere."
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