ZadekpediaJeff Sessions is discussed in three episodes of The Bob Zadek Show as Attorney General under President Trump.
The drug war
In a July 2017 episode, Bob Zadek introduces Sessions as a “self-described drug warrior” who, in a recent op-ed piece, complained that being soft on drug sentencing means more violent crime, and who had taken what Zadek calls a solemn oath to vigorously enforce the drug laws. Zadek frames the episode as a response to that op-ed and to Sessions’ policies, and welcomes the Harvard economist Jeffrey Miron, author of Drug War Crimes: The Consequences of Prohibition, to rebut the premise that drugs beget violence Miron vs. Sessions on the Drug War (2017).
Miron argues that Sessions has the connection “almost precisely backwards”: it is not that drugs beget violence, but that drug prohibition induces violence, because banning a good drives its market underground, where contractual and territorial disputes cannot be resolved through courts and lawyers and the substitute is violence. Zadek adds that Sessions appears to reason that because a law is on the books it must be enforced, without asking whether more vigorous enforcement or the laws themselves make sense. The excerpt breaks off mid-sentence at that point Miron vs. Sessions on the Drug War (2017).
Civil asset forfeiture
Sessions returns in a December 2019 episode with Brian D. Kelly on policing for profit. Zadek reads aloud a one-sentence quotation he attributes to Sessions: “Civil asset forfeiture is a key tool that helps law enforcement defund organized crime, take back ill-gotten gains, and prevent new crimes from being committed. And it weakens the criminals and the cartels.” Zadek calls Sessions one of the worst Attorneys General the country has had and tells listeners they will learn how wrong almost every word of that sentence is Brian D. Kelly on the False Promise of Policing-for-Profit (2019).
Earlier in the same hour, Zadek argues that forfeiture at best reduces the supply of drugs rather than demand, so that with demand constant the cost rises and a person committing drug crime to support a habit must commit more crime to support the same habit. He notes that forfeiture may not even affect supply, but that this is the most it could do Brian D. Kelly on the False Promise of Policing-for-Profit (2019).
Later, Kelly says that a 2015 reform under the Obama administration was quite helpful on equitable sharing but was largely reversed under Sessions, and that federal forfeiture reform is not likely to pass into law for at least a year or two, leaving reform to the states Brian D. Kelly on the False Promise of Policing-for-Profit (2019).
The certification power and immigration
In an August 2021 episode on asylum and Afghanistan, the guest Ilya Somin describes a Board of Immigration Appeals decision holding that a slave laborer for a terrorist organization had provided material support for terrorism and was therefore ineligible for asylum. Somin explains that the Attorney General can reverse BIA decisions at a stroke of his pen using the certification power, and that this power was used in the Trump administration a number of times by Attorney General Jeff Sessions to reverse BIA rulings that were favorable to immigrants and asylum seekers. Somin adds that the new Attorney General, Merrick Garland, has used the power in other cases himself Hard Questions About Asylum and Afghanistan (2021).
Zadek, for his part, treats the executive branch’s making of judicial-type decisions as a violation of separation-of-powers principles, and asks how easily the BIA line of reasoning can be overcome. Somin’s answer is that the Attorney General can certify and reverse, and that the underlying problem lies in the statute authorizing the arrangement Hard Questions About Asylum and Afghanistan (2021).
Across episodes
Sessions is a recurring antagonist rather than a developed subject. In 2017 he is the drug warrior whose op-ed prompts an economics rebuttal from Miron; in 2019 he is the author of a single sentence defending forfeiture, read aloud by Zadek and dismantled by Kelly’s research; in 2021 he is cited by Somin as a past user of the certification power, with Garland as the current holder. The episodes show no episode in which a guest defends him.