He wrote an advisory opinion justifying the
U.S. invasion of
Panama and arrest of
Manuel Noriega.
[16] He wrote legal justifications for the practice of rendition,
[17] so that the
FBI could enter onto foreign soil without the consent of the host government to apprehend fugitives wanted by the United States government for terrorism or drug-trafficking.
[16]
[...]
Asked whether he thought a constitutional right to privacy included the right to an abortion, Barr responded that he believed the Constitution was not originally intended to create a right to abortion; that
Roe v. Wade was thus wrongly decided; and that abortion should be a "legitimate issue for state legislators".
[27] "Barr also said at the hearings that Roe v. Wade was 'the law of the land' and claimed he did not have 'fixed or settled views' on abortion."
[28]
[...]
The New York Times described the "central theme" of his tenure to be "his contention that violent crime can be reduced only by expanding Federal and state prisons to jail habitual violent offenders."
[34] In an effort to prioritize violent crime, Barr reassigned three hundred FBI agents from counterintelligence work to investigations of
gang violence.
The New York Times called this move "the largest single manpower shift in the bureau's history."
[34]
[...]
Barr argued that incarceration reduced crime, pointing to crime and incarceration rates in 1960, 1970, 1980 and 1990; a 1999 criminology study criticized Barr's analysis, saying "so complex an issue as the relationship between crime and punishment cannot be addressed through so simplistic an analysis as a negative correlation between the two very aggregated time series of crime rates and incarceration rates."
[38] University of Minnesota criminologist
Michael Tonry said the data in Barr's report was deceptively presented; if Barr had chosen five-year intervals, then the data would not have supported Barr's argument, and if Barr had chosen to look at violent crime specifically (as opposed to all crimes as a category), then the data would not have supported his argument.
[39]
Barr said in the report, "The benefits of increased incarceration would be
enjoyed disproportionately by black Americans".
[39]
[Let me interject here that it has been scientifically determined that the reduction of lead in the environment was primarily responsible for a reduction in violence]
[...]
In 1992, Barr launched a surveillance program to gather records of innocent Americans' international phone calls.
[45] The DOJ Inspector General concluded that this program was launched without a review of the legality of the program.
[45] According to
USA Today, the program "provided a blueprint for far broader phone-data surveillance the government launched after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001."
[45]
In late 1992, Independent Counsel
Lawrence Walsh, who had been chosen to investigate the
Iran–Contra affair, found documents in the possession of Reagan's former defense secretary,
Caspar Weinberger, which Walsh said was "evidence of a conspiracy among the highest-ranking Reagan Administration officials to lie to Congress and the American public."
[46][47] Weinberger was set to stand trial on felony charges on January 5, 1993.
[46][48] His "indictment said Mr. Weinberger's notes contradicted Mr. Bush's assertions that he had only a fragmentary knowledge of the arms secretly sold to Iran in 1985 and 1986 in exchange for American hostages in Lebanon."
[48][47][49] According to Walsh, then-president Bush might have been called as a witness.
[50]
On December 24, 1992, during his final month in office, Bush, on the advice of Barr, pardoned Weinberger,
[8][51] along with
five other administration officials who had been found guilty on charges relating to the
Iran–Contra affair.
[8][52][53][46] Barr was consulted extensively regarding the pardons, and especially advocated for pardoning Weinberger.
[54]
[...]
Upon leaving the DOJ in 1993, Barr was appointed by Virginia Governor
George Allen to co-chair a commission to implement tougher criminal justice policies and abolish
parole in the state.
[58][59] Barr has been described as a "leader of the parole-abolition campaign" in Virginia.
[60]
[...]
In 1994, Barr became Executive Vice President and
General Counsel of the telecommunications company
GTE Corporation, where he served for 14 years. During his corporate tenure, Barr directed a successful litigation campaign by the local telephone industry to achieve deregulation by scuttling a series of FCC rules, personally arguing several cases in the federal courts of appeals and the Supreme Court.
[61][62] In 2000, when GTE merged with Bell Atlantic to become
Verizon Communications, he left that position.
[...]
Barr supports the
death penalty, arguing that it reduces crime. He advocated a Bush-backed bill that would have expanded the types of crime that could be punished by execution.
[...]
n 1991, Barr stated that he believed the framers of the Constitution did not originally intend to create a right to abortion; that
Roe v. Wade was thus wrongly decided; and that abortion should be a "legitimate issue for state legislators."
[27] In contrast, Barr said during his 1991 confirmation hearings that
Roe was "the law of the land" and that he did not have "fixed or settled views" on the subject.
[28]
In a 1995 article for
The Catholic Lawyer, Barr stated that the American government is "predicated precisely" on the
Judeo-Christian system.
[163][163]:3 Barr grapples with the challenge of representing Catholicism "in an increasingly militant, secular age."
[163]:1 Barr asserts that there are three ways
secularists use "law as a legal weapon."
[163]:8 The first method is through elimination of traditional moral norms through legislation and litigation; Barr cites the elimination of the barriers to divorce and the Supreme Court's decision in
Roe v. Wade as examples of this method.
[163]:8 The second is the promotion of
moral relativism through the passage of laws that dissolve moral consensus and enforce neutrality.
[163]:8 Barr draws attention to a 1987 case,
Gay Rights Coalition v. Georgetown University, which "compel
Georgetown University to treat homosexual activist groups like any other student group."
[163]:9 The third method is the use of law directly against religion; as an example of this method, Barr cites efforts to use the
Establishment Clause to exclude religiously motivated citizens from the public square.
[163]:9 Concluding, Barr states the need to "restructure education and take advantage of existing tax deductions for charitable institutions to promote Catholic education."
[163]:12
[...]
Barr supports a federal ban on
marijuana.
[164] However, he has stated that the discrepancy between federal and state law is suboptimal, and that if a uniform federal ban on marijuana could not be achieved, then he would support the
STATES Act on
marijuana legalization.
[164] "I think it's a mistake to back off on marijuana...
