Attorney General

Institutional context

The Attorney General of the United States is the head of the Department of Justice and the chief law-enforcement officer of the federal government. The office was created by the Judiciary Act of 1789. From 1789 through 1993, every holder was male — a span of 204 years.

Career path

Reno earned a chemistry degree from Cornell and a law degree from Harvard Law School in 1963, when women constituted a small fraction of the class. She practised law in Florida and served as State Attorney for Miami-Dade County from 1978 to 1993, repeatedly re-elected to the position.

Appointment

President Bill Clinton's first two nominees for Attorney General — Zoë Baird and Kimba Wood — withdrew under the so-called "Nannygate" controversies. Reno was nominated as the third choice, confirmed by the Senate by 98–0, and sworn in on 12 March 1993. She served the entire two terms of the Clinton administration, departing on 20 January 2001.

Tenure

Seven years and ten months, the second-longest tenure of any Attorney General in the office's history. Her tenure included the Branch Davidian siege at Waco in 1993, the Oklahoma City bombing investigation, the Elián González custody case, the Microsoft antitrust litigation, and oversight of the Independent Counsel investigations of the Clinton administration.

Cluster context

Reno's 1993 appointment is in the dataset's slow baseline period. The same year saw Stella Rimington's directorship of MI5 in the United Kingdom, making 1993 a small two-event year by the standards of the time — notable only against the near-zero baseline of the preceding decade and the very high rates of the post-2018 period.

Sources

• US Department of Justice — Office of the Attorney General
• Federal Judicial Center — Reno biographical entry