Law Professor Endorsed for U.S. Attorney : Law enforcement: Boxer recommends Alan D. Bersin as the nominee for the coveted post in San Diego and Imperial counties. He was a Rhodes scholar with Clinton.

Alan D. Bersin, a University of San Diego law professor, is slated to become the new U.S. attorney for San Diego and Imperial counties, legal and political sources said Thursday.

Sen. Barbara Boxer has recommended to President Clinton that he nominate Bersin, 46, a Rhodes scholar with the President in the late 1960s, for the highly coveted position of top federal law enforcement official in the two counties, both of which border Mexico.

Sam Chapman, Boxer’s top aide, would say only that the senator has sent her recommendation to Clinton. Although the President makes the formal nomination, senators are usually accorded considerable deference on these appointments.

Under a power-sharing agreement between California’s two new senators, Boxer gets to make the recommendations for U.S. attorney in San Diego and San Francisco, while Dianne Feinstein has that prerogative in Los Angeles and Sacramento.

Chapman said that in making her selection, Boxer “relied heavily” on the advice of a committee of eight San Diegans, headed by Sister Sally M. Furay, provost at the University of San Diego. The committee included three Latino lawyers, two of whom are women; retired federal Judge J. Lawrence Irving, and discount store executive Sol Price.

Bersin worked at the Los Angeles law firm Munger, Tolles & Olson from 1975 until last summer when he moved to San Diego. His wife, Lisa Foster--an attorney and Common Cause leader--is from San Diego, and Bersin was active in the Clinton campaign there.

It is unusual, although not unprecedented, for a lawyer to garner a U.S. attorney’s job in a city where he is not a longtime resident. Sources close to Boxer said they considered Bersin, who speaks fluent Spanish, clearly the best candidate.

Bersin, who declined comment, is undergoing the routine background check. He beat out six aspirants, including a Latina, Maria Arroyo Tabin, who heads the criminal division of the U.S. attorney’s office in San Diego.

Some Latina activists who had hoped Arroyo would get the job decried the choice of an Anglo male, particularly one who had spent the bulk of his legal career in Los Angeles.

“Here we have a Latina who is very well qualified,” said Irma Munoz, former chairwoman of the San Diego County Democratic Central Committee.

But Sergio Feria, president of the San Diego La Raza Lawyers Assn., said Bersin would do a fine job and bring a fresh perspective to the office.

“Hopefully he’ll be able to direct the office’s resources to areas that have not gotten resources in the past--white-collar crime and abuses by the Border Patrol,” said Feria, whose organization initially endorsed Arroyo and another federal prosecutor, Gregory Vega.

Although Bersin has never been a prosecutor, he specialized in complex fraud cases at Munger Tolles. He represented the Philippine government in its efforts to recover millions of dollars looted from the country’s treasury by the late dictator Ferdinand Marcos and his wife, Imelda.

In another high profile case, Bersin was one of several Munger Tolles lawyers who helped Salomon Bros. clean house in the aftermath of financial scandals at the brokerage firm.

Bersin served twice as a special counsel to the Los Angeles Police Commission in the 1970s. He also represented the city of Los Angeles on a pro bono basis, from 1987 to 1991, in litigation contending that the county of Los Angeles exacerbated homelessness by refusing to provide essential food and shelter to indigent residents. Working in concert with legal aid lawyers, the city obtained $38 million in improvements to the general relief system.

A native of Brooklyn, Bersin studied political science at Harvard University, where he was an all Ivy League football player. After spending two years as a Rhodes scholar in England, he studied law at Yale University and moved to California in 1974.