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- Launched strident and sweeping attacks on the judiciary for protecting the rights of women and minorities;
- Cooperated in the corruption of the legal process by allowing its decisions to be shaped by appeals from politicians not based on law; and
- Become the center of anti-civil rights activity in the federal government, reaching into other agencies to stop and slow policies thought to be overly protective of civil rights."⁽²⁾

The predominate theme in all these actions - and in their expansion in 1982 - is the desire to narrow and limit the remedies available to racial minorities, women, the handicapped and others when their rights have been denied.

What has been at issue in these radical departures from past practice under democratic and Republican administrations alike is no simple conflict of philosophy between conservative and liberal theories of government's proper role; even when a civil rights remedy is one that the government says it favors, like the voluntary affirmative action plans agreed to by business and labor - the Justice Department has loudly proclaimed its opposition.

The effect of these actions is greater than the set-backs recorded on any particular issue; the sum of these reversals places the Regan administration squarely in opposition to granting and insuring civil rights as the laws require and the constitution demands.

(2) Without Justice, pp. 3, 4.