14. Iranian Prince Appointed to US Supreme Court

Daily Examiner, 24 July

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"Iranian Prince Appointed to US Supreme Court

In a surprise decision the President last night nominated Professor Saeed Yarvali of Georgetown University to fill the Supreme Court seat of retiring Justice Corelli.

Professor Yarvali is related to the late Shah of Iran and, until the student revolution of 1979 led to the establishment of the Islamic Republic of Iran, Yarvali had a distant claim on that nation's throne. In the course of the revolution, Yarvali's father - a member of the Shah of Iran's feared secret police - was executed by revolutionaries. Soon after, the young Yarvali fled with his mother and brother to Switzerland. For a time they managed to maintain themselves there in the comfortable lifestyle that they had enjoyed back home in Iran. However, when Switzerland froze the Geneva bank accounts of certain members of the Shah's regime the suddenly penniless Yarvalis were forced to emigrate to the United States.

During a visit to America in 1966, Mrs Yarvali had spent a week at the luxurious Everglades Country Club and resort in up-market Hampton, Illinois. Soon after her arrival as an immigrant in the United States Mrs Yarvali (a onetime member of the Iranian Olympic tennis team) returned to the Everglades, this time as an in-house tennis coach. In the years that followed the Yarvali boys attended Hampton's elementary and high schools. From here hard graft and the occasional scholarship took the young Saeed to Yale and then to Harvard where he graduated first in class from the Law School. (His younger brother followed more closely in his mother's footsteps, taking a bronze medal in swimming at the Barcelona Olympics and subsequently becoming lead swimming coach at the Everglades).

After university, Yarvali did not immediately continue with his law career, spending two years instead as a volunteer with the United Nations in Palestine. Since that time Professor Yarvali has been critical of Israel's conduct in the Palestinian territories and a prominent member of an ongoing campaign to boycott Israeli universities pending a full and final resolution of ongoing Mid-East tensions.

Given the strength of the pro-Israeli lobby within Congress, Professor Yarvali's stance towards Israel is likely to become a key area of focus during his confirmation hearings and could conceivably stymie the nomination process. Questioned about this, one administration official closely involved in the selection process indicated that Professor Yarvali's views on a particular foreign policy issue were not germane to his suitability for the office of Supreme Court justice and claimed that it would be difficult to find many Iranian-American attorneys of Professor Yarvali's calibre whose views on the Palestinian issue would entirely accord with those of the pro-Israeli lobby.

While this may be true it rather begs the question why the President would apparently go out of his way to antagonise a powerful constituency that was partly responsible for his success in the Presidential election. The answer may lie in the math. While the President scored well in east and west-coast states he did less well in central and mid-western states. In this context the President's nomination of Professor Yarvali can be seen as something of a political master-stroke. Before his appointment to Georgetown University, Yarvali spent the better part of his life living and working in Illinois and Michigan and several times in last night's nomination speech the President emphasised those mid-western connections. This courting of the mid-west has to be worth something when the President goes grubbing for votes in key mid-western states in the next Presidential election.

Of course internationally the President's nomination of Yarvali also sends a strong political message. Since 9/11 this nation has been perceived by many in the Muslim world to have embarked upon a new Crusade. The President's nomination of a prominent Muslim-American signals that such logic is unduly simplistic, that the United States can be an enemy to Muslim terrorists, yet remain a land of opportunity for Muslim people. Professor Yarvali's nomination also sends a message to the American people that there is a community within our midst who contribute much and have much to contribute to our nation's continuing prosperity. In the near constant drum-beat to war that has sounded since the Twin Towers collapsed that is a message which has often been drowned out. It remains to be seen whether it is a message that the Ameerican electorate has any appetite to hear.

During his own lifetime, Professor Yarvali has made an impressive contribution to American society. During the later Clinton administration and the first George W Bush administration, Yarvali served as head of the Civil Rights Unit within the Department of Justice. Much of his workload during this time was concerned with the continuing struggle for full equality by African-Americans and Yarvali has forged strong links with this community which will likely stand him in good stead in the confirmation proceedings before the United States Senate.

Yarvali's urbane personality and his obvious talent as helmsman of the Civil Rights Unit led to his being retained in position by President George W Bush. The reasons for his unexpected departure mid-way through Bush's first term in office have never fully been explained and may yet become a point of focus during the Senate confirmation hearings. Yarvali's profile on the website of Georgetown University Law School suggests that he left only because he was offered the position of Professor of Constitutional Law and Theory at Georgetown. However, a Justice Department official who worked with Yarvali suggested last night that Yarvali's departure was prompted by discomfort with the Bush administration's policies towards the Muslim world and, in particular, its invasion of Iraq. If true, this could be the Achilles Heel in Yarvali's generally impressive resume. The American people and their representatives on Capitol Hill are a tolerant lot but that tolerance is unlikely to extend to a Supreme Court justice who is opposed to a war in which American soldiers are dying. Unswerving patriotism of a particular sort is generally considered a prerequisite to holding high federal office.

At Georgetown, Yarvali is reputed to be a popular faculty member among both staff and students. His courses are heavily over-subscribed, though attendees are warned to come prepared: the professor apparently does not suffer fools lightly and does not suffer the under-prepared at all. In his time since joining the Georgetown law faculty, Professor Yarvali has authored a seminal textbook on civil rights law. However, it is a law review article on "Muslim Rights in Christian America", published last year, that will perhaps excite the most attention at Yarvali's confirmation hearings, particularly among those eager for their own purposes to portray Yarvali as an extremist who should not be allowed to join the nation's foremost jurists.

If Yarvali's nomination is confirmed by the US Senate and the President for one must believe that he will be - Presidents tend not to nominate sure losers - it will be a tremendous personal achievement for Yarvali and a significant political milestone for all Iranian-Americans. To go from turmoil in Tehran to a seat in America's foremost temple of justice in a single lifetime is a remarkable accomplishment. For the President to nominate the first Muslim Supreme Court justice at a time when America is embroiled in difficulties with much of the Muslim world presents a challenge to those who contend that America is fundamentally anti-Islam or anything other than a land of equal and golden opportunity for all of its people, regardless of background."

9. The Nomination of Saeed Yarvali

[Transcript of White House Press Conference, 23 July]

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Press Secretary - Ladies and gentlemen, the President of the United States.

President - Good evening. Over the last month my staff and I have done a thorough job seeking a person suitable to succeed Justice Corelli to the Supreme Court bench. Choosing a member of our nation's highest court is a responsibility that I take very seriously. Presidents - and even distinguished members of the press corps - have a tendency to come and go. Members of the Supreme Court continue in office for many decades. So the person I nominate today will, if that nomination is confirmed, serve on the Supreme Court long after my administration has been consigned to history.

Our country is constructed on the rule of law. Law is the fabric from which the founding fathers and mothers and every generation of Ameicans since their time have fashioned the complex magnificence of the world's greatest democracy. Supreme Court justices, as the final arbiters of what our Constitution and our laws truly mean, have played a central, sometimes controversial, but always vital part in our nation's being. So I have approached the task of finding Justice Corelli's successor with all due consideration. I have sought to find a candidate who represents what is best about this nation and who seems best place to steward it from the rarefied heights of the Supreme Court in the months and years to come.

Contrary to speculation by journalists, including some prominent members of the press corps gathered here tonight, I have not evaluated candidates solely through the prism of who they vote for or what faith they practise or what corner of the world their forebears came from. At least, not entirely. [Laughter]. The office of President is a political office and so I cannot pretend that I have been blind to the fact that a particular candidate may hold especial appeal for one constituency or another. Nor do I deny that Justice Corelli's departure has given me a chance to change the present voting balance within the Supreme Court. Transforming it into what some would describe as a more liberal institution but what I believe will be a court better attuned to the norms and aspirations of today's America and not a Court espousing the hide-bound sensibilities of yester-year. However, in all my considerations I have sought to find a jurist of the highest character. Someone who has attained the highest distinction in the field of law, yet who has that understanding of humanity which is the universal hallmark of good judges.

I have found that combination of excellence and understanding in Saeed Yarvali. Dr Yarvali teaches constitutional law and theory at Georgetown University. He grew up in Illinois, the great state that I had the opportunity to represent in the United States Senate. Then, as a young man, he came east on a tour de force of the Ivy League, graduating first in class with an arts degree from Yale University and then summa cum laude from Harvard Law School. Giving him what President Kennedy once described as the best of all worlds: a Harvard education and a Yale degree [laughter] - a two out of three that I have yet to achieve. [Laughter].

After Harvard, Dr Yarvali returned to the mid-west. He worked as a civil rights attorney in Chicago while simultaneously studying for his doctoral degree at Northwestern University. Later he also worked as a civil rights attorney at the Department of Justice during the Clinton and George W Bush administrations. By this time he had also begun to scale the greasy pole of academic life, teaching for a short time at the University of Chicago Law School before finally being granted tenure as Julie Eisenberg Professor of Constitutional Law and Theory at Georgetown University Law School here in Washington.

Unknown to you all, late last year Dr Yarvali declined an offer from me to become US Attorney General, choosing instead to nurse his mother through the illness that finally killed her just two months ago. Mrs Yarvali was herself a person of no little distinction. She was a distant relative of the Iranian royal family. She was also married to a high-ranking member of the late Shah of Iran's secret police. When the Islamic Revolution erupted in 1979, Mrs Yarvali's husband was soon executed by the revolutionaries. Mrs Yarvali fled to Switzerland with her then ten-year old son, Saeed, and his younger brother. A year later they came to the United States where they lived for a short time in Manhattan before moving to the Great Plains, far from the terror and turmoil of revolutionary Iran. I am told by Dr Yarvali that it was his childhood introduction of the harsh realities of life without law that eventually led him to his choice of career.

Dr Yarvali is a distinguished Iranian-American whose professional achievements and personal experiences make him a man of rare distinction. Whether as a boy fleeing a land where the rule of law had collapsed, for a time at least, or as an attorney championing civil rights in a land where the rule of law holds strong, whether as an ambitious teacher of law who has scaled the heights of academic life or as a dutiful son who declined high public office so that he could nurse his dying mother, Dr Yarvali shows a rare combination of talents and attributes which in my opinion make him a distinguished candidate for nomination to a court which is no stranger to distinction. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you Professor Saeed Yarvali, my nominee for the position of Supreme Court justice. [Applause].

Professor Yarvali - Thank-you Mr President for those kind words of introduction. I do not know if I am a man of distinction but I know that I am standing beside such a man this evening. [Applause]. Only in America is it possible for a man to dream a life and then to live the dream. However, you will forgive me for admitting that while the President was speaking I had to pinch myself once or twice to make sure that I was not still dreaming. I cannot yet believe that the little boy who fled Tehran not so many years ago is now standing before you as a prospective member of this great nation's greatest court. I was very young when I was forced to flee Iran with my mother and brother but the memory of the lawlessness of revolution that we left behind us is something that I have never quite escaped. It was that brief bitter taste of lawlessness, and the misery that ensues when the rule of law collapses, that inspired in me a lifelong passion for the law and the civilising order that it brings. Of course in the years since I came to America a lot has changed. The little boy who left Tehran has been given a degree of opportunity that only the land of opportunity could afford. A top-class education in Illinois state schools. A world-class education at our nation's finest universities. A chance to plough back the profits of that education through public service in two presidential administrations. And the privilege of tenure at Georgetown University where every day I get the opportunity to nurture the finest minds of a nation that has nurtured me in every way since I arrived on its shores as a stranger.

I am grateful to the President for giving me the opportunity through this nomination to do still more to discharge the enormous debt of gratitude that all of us, and I more than most, owe as citizens of a republic that gives us all so much. I know that nomination is no sure promise of confirmation by the Senate and I look forward to answering any questions that Senators may seek to put to me before my nomination is deicided upon by them. For now I must content myself with whe dream of joining the United States Supreme Court, a dream that many an attorney harbours and which only a few can realise. I thank the President for the great honour that he has brought on myself and my family and all Iranian-Americans with the nomination that he has announced here this evening. Thank-you, Mr President.

President - Thank-you, Professor Yarvali."