06 Dec Justice O’Connor and the Iraq Study Group
I am just now beginning to make my way through the Iraq Study Group report issued today. I wanted to raise one small but interesting issue relating to Justice O’Connor’s service on the study group. We all know various historical examples in which a sitting or former justice served an important political function (John Jay, Robert Jackson, Earl Warren, etc.). But it seems this is one of the few instances in recent memory in which a former Supreme Court justice is part of a team giving political advice to the Executive Branch.
The issue is quite interesting and I have not seen much written on this aspect of the study group. Because she is a former sitting justice it obviously does not raise nearly the same separation of powers concerns. (Although she still may sit by designation on federal cases). I personally think it is a good political move of the study group to include her, but one might argue it was not the better part of discretion for a retired justice to put herself in the position of giving political advice to the Executive branch about the most important foreign policy issue of the day.
Thoughts?
Roger, I wonder if the question here isn’t one of competence as much appropriateness. What qualifies Sandra Day O’Connor as an expert on Iraq or any other foreign policy issue?
Unfortunately, I think the same question applies to several other members of the Group.
Geoff, Agreed. Check out Richard Stern’s post on Open University, which makes the bunch of them look pretty clownish. These blue-ribbon commissions should be put out to pasture along with most of the usual suspects that show up as members of them.
I’m a little less severe in my view of these things — but it’s helped by not having had the time to read the report yet. My initial reaction was that O’Connor, Meese, and Jordan (at least) should have refused on the ground that they were manifestly unqualified, and that it would have been more dignified for them to do so — to turn it over to those more competent and deserving. On the other hand, they wouldn’t necessarily have played much of a role in writing it, and their main function might have been as a means of ensuring that a smaller group wouldn’t jump the rails; i.e., to quit or dissent from any process that wasn’t fundamentally fair, or ignored the weight of expert submissions. They might in good conscience serve that function without purporting to be sufficient by themselves.
Anyway, it was the Iraq Study Group . . . not, say, the “High Level Experts” used for most European and UN studies, which always makes me think of those expert only in the most simplified versions of a problem, or maybe of carpenters who are high.
Gee, I think a judge has by far the best skill set to deal with the problem of Iraq — but only if you deal with it as what it is: a LEGAL problem, not a political problem or a military problem.
The invasion and occupation of Iraq were and are CRIMES, and that is all that they are.
This report is just as irrellevant to reality as the Bush administration’s preposterous lies and fantasies are, for the simple reason that it fails to make any effort to address the actual problem, namely, the ongoing crimes of the Bush administration.
Ed, You’re restraint is the better part of wisdom, and it’s true that if nothing else the report gives political cover (behind the guise of individuals perceived as wise if not expert). You’re also right to highlight the fact that it was tagged as a “Study Group” – which is odd, isn’t it (although I know this is now the appellation du jour in the think-tank world for collective efforts) – as if the group were getting together to prepare for an exam, or as a book club, or for some other wholly amateur undertaking.
Peter, I think the only difference between our takes on this may be explained by the fact that you’ve read the report and I have not — which means that I’m only eligible for a pre-study group, at best. Congrats to you and your colleagues for running such a great site, which amounts to an assembly of high level experts in its own right. Charles, Since I’m distending the comments already, I think the difference between our perspectives on this, in contrast, is huge. Questions concerning the legality of the conflict and the occupation are very important and appropriate for lawyers, and remain vital. In my view, the salience of international law is as clear as ever. But do you really think that these are the only questions, as opposed to being the ones on which lawyers have the most to say? Resolving these questions isn’t mutually exclusive, but may be a matter of priority, and I come out on the opposite side. If I had to choose between getting a better answer than we already have to the poltical and military problem that is Iraq, and getting an answer (again, better than we already have) as to the legal… Read more »
Edward,
Well I suppose I could agree that being 50% in denial is better than being 100% in denial.
But the problem is that this entire exerise strikes me as being analogous to relationship counseling for rapists and their victims, an investment plan for a bank robbers, or perhaps trying to solve Poland’s problems in 1943 by developing a more effective German occupation strategies and / or political policies.
There are times when reality simply has to be dealt with as is.
Mr. Bush and his administration are the only real problem here, that’s been true from the from the start, and it will be true as long as they remain in office. The condition of Iraq is no accident, it is the product of systematic corruption and delusional thinking. These people are criminals and they are fools.
If this country is going to get real about anything, it is going to have to get real about that first.