It’s not as though this is a new problem in American rights law. The expansion of defenses like qualified immunity for federal officials, the statutory restrictions on collateral federal review of state criminal convictions with constitutional infirmities, the stark limitations on common law constitutional remedies in the courts – all of these areas of doctrine accept the idea that...
Well, the rumors have now officially made it to the blogosphere. Yale Law School Dean Harold Koh is (at the very least) on someone's short list to take over from John Bellinger as the next Legal Adviser at the Department of State. See it here in TNR, which got it from no less a source than the Yale Daily News....
Here’s a new job posting a colleague just sent along that even Ken might find of interest: The DoD Office of General Counsel is soliciting resumes for multiple attorney term positions. Successful applicants will be part of an interagency team representing the government in over 200 habeas corpus petitions filed in D.C. District Court by individuals detained by DoD at...
Bravo to everyone who's spent the past months and years pressing the Bush Administration Justice Department to release more of its legal opinions supporting "war on terror" policies. Looks like all that work (by more folks than I can reasonably name in this space) finally paid off. This morning one can find in the "What's New" section of the...
A single, bad-weather week in January seems to bring more actual news than blog commentary about it. Among under-blogged tidbits this week: • A federal court in Washington heard the first post-Boumediene case about whether constitutional rights extend to U.S. military-held detainees in Afghanistan; • Senator Feinstein (no kidding) introduced a bill that would not only mandate the closure of Guantanamo, but...
At the risk of contributing further to Ken’s angst about the coming post-Guantanamo future, I thought OJ readers might be interested in this latest entry in the public what-to-do-next discussion. Fordham Law School’s Leitner Center for International Law and Justice has begun posting a series of white papers prepared by various groups of scholars with recommendations about international human rights...
Over the weekend, Stuart Taylor joined the cast of conservative legal commentators (see also Jack Goldsmith, Ben Wittes, Jack Goldsmith and Ben Wittes) offering advice to the incoming Obama Administration on how to right the legal ship of security and state. Taylor’s reasonable jumping-off point: the actual security threats against the United States. President-elect Obama's announcement of his (mostly) stellar national...
No less an authoritative source than the Wall Street Journal reports that outgoing Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff may be rethinking his views on what makes for effective counterterrorism strategy. The Bush administration's point man in protecting America against terrorism says U.S. investments in safety should not be restricted to airport screening machines or border fences. Michael Chertoff says the...
Thanks Ken. Let me try to clarify again. On one level, you’re quite right: many human rights advocates believe a new system of administrative detention – beyond the criminal law and beyond the Geneva regime – is not a good idea as a matter of policy. (I hasten to add many who are not human rights advocates think...
With apologies for arriving late to the helpful Hakimi-Waxman-Anderson exchange, I thought it worth noting the apparent consensus on at least one position I, too, share: there is no categorical international law prohibition on “administrative” (or otherwise non-criminal) detention. Indeed, at risk of repeating myself, I’m not sure I could name a human rights or humanitarian law scholar I...
At risk of distracting us too soon from the merits vel non of natural law, I wanted to take up another piece of Mary Ellen’s account – namely, her fairly positive outlook on the prospects of domestic court enforcement of international law. Despite the subject matter’s placement in the very last chapter of the book, Mary Ellen I think rightly notes:...
Turns out rumors of a new Obama Administration-developed security court may have been greatly exaggerated – or at least premature. The blogosphere was briefly abuzz yesterday after an AP wire story in the morning reported that some of the Guantanamo detainees “might have to go before a new court designed especially to handle sensitive national security cases, according to [unnamed]...
