Last month, The George Barrett Social Justice Program hosted Cecil VanDevender for a talk on working at the Department of Justice (DOJ). A graduate of Princeton University and Georgetown University Law Center, VanDevender worked for several years at Bass, Berry & Sims before pivoting to the U.S. Attorney’s Office within the DOJ, where he served for 12 years.
VanDevender used the DOJ’s Latin motto – Qui pro Domina Justitia Sequitur, which loosely translates to “who prosecutes on behalf of justice” – to jumpstart a conversation on the true meaning of the motto and how it represents the work performed at DOJ.
He discussed how the motto keeps the justices on track and serves the larger goal of justice rather than the President’s policy preferences or goals, as opposed to a private practice setting, where attorneys advocate for their clients’ preferred outcomes.
“There is something called the Best Practices Memo put out by the Office of Legal Counsel,” VanDevender explained. “This memo says directly [that] we must always give candid independent principal advice, even when the advice is inconsistent with the aims of policymakers, and the advice is not designed to merely advance the policy preferences of the President.”
VanDevender noted that the goal of the DOJ is not to maximize the number of convictions, maximize the length of a particular sentence, or win at all costs. “The role is to balance the number of competing considerations while also representing sovereign interests of the United States,” he said.
“One of the best things about working at the DOJ, when I was there, was that your office is staffed with a number of other public servants who feel strongly about the need to do the right thing the right way,” he added.
VanDevender described his journey to the DOJ, focusing on his most recent work on the first two investigations into Donald Trump. These investigations addressed allegations that Trump engaged in criminal activity in connection with the 2020 Presidential Election and that he willfully retained classified documents.
When first posed with the opportunity, VanDevender was unsure he wanted to accept, but he did so based on the principles of the DOJ that he so strongly believed in.“[I was asked] if I wanted to go into detail, and to be honest, my initial reaction was that I was not sure I did. I was very reluctant to go,” VanDevender explained. “But ultimately I decided, based on some of these kinds of institutional norms and values I’ve been talking about — the desire to uphold rule of law [and] ensure accountability for powerful people — I agreed to go into detail.”
A grand jury in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida eventually indicted Trump on 37 felony counts, and another grand jury for the District of Columbia U.S. District Court issued a four-count indictment of Trump for conspiracy to defraud the United States. In July 2024, a U.S. District Judge dismissed the classified documents prosecution.
Eventually, the Supreme Court held for the first time that a former president has at least a presumptive degree from criminal liability for any official acts undertaken while in office, and the case was remanded to a Southern Florida District Court.
“The District Court found that although there had been a 150-year tradition of Attorney Generals appointing special counsel to handle sensitive cases, in fact the Attorney General did not have such power, and the appointment of Jack Smith was unconstitutional and so [it] dismissed the case,” he said.
While in the process of appeals, the case was dropped after the 2024 presidential election. VanDevender decided to move back to Nashville for a potential return to the U.S. Attorney’s Office. He has since shifted to a career in teaching law; he is moving to Portland, Oregon, to teach at Lewis and Clark Law School.
VanDevender described his work on his last detail at DOJ as challenging but fulfilling work.
“The two years I spent there were grueling, stressful, but extremely rewarding,” Vandevender said. “Ultimately, I felt like what we did there every day upheld the best traditions of the department as I’ve described them. We tried to do everything as best we could by the book and do the right thing.”
