Political Quotes

“I rise today to congratulate Karen J. Lewis on her many years of service to Congress. After a 45-year career distinguished by outstanding achievements, Karen will retire from the Congressional Research Service, CRS, in January 2020 after leading the Service's American Law Division, ALD, for many years. Karen joined CRS as a legislative attorney in 1974 after graduating from Albany Law School earlier that year. In the following decade, Karen provided nonpartisan advice to Congress on some of the most difficult legal matters facing the Nation in the 1970s and 1980s, including sex discrimination in the workplace, abortion rights after Roe v. Wade, and the Equal Rights Amendment. She also advised Congress on the implementation of numerous civil rights laws, including title VII of the Civil Rights Act, the Fair Housing Act, title IX of the Higher Education Act, and the Age Discrimination Act. In 1984, Karen moved into CRS management, serving first as the section head of ALD's consumer law group before heading the Division's administrative law section. In the nearly 25 years she served in these roles, Karen helped mentor dozens of attorneys, engraining in them CRS's core values of providing authoritative and objective legal advice regardless of partisan affiliation. Any attorney trained under Karen's tutelage is well familiar with her repeated advice to rely on primary sources to ensure CRS's legal advice is trustworthy and reliable.…”