jack goldsmith

Add Human Rights Watch’s Joanne Mariner to the list of civil libertarians who dissent from the Obama administration’s emerging proposals for preventive detention. This is from a newly released statement from the organization:
“Pursuing a policy of indefinite detention without charge would send the Obama administration down the same misguided path as its predecessor,” said Joanne [...]

It should come as no surprise that President Obama’s nomination of the widely respected human rights expert and dean of the Yale Law School, Harold Hongju Koh, to be the State Department’s legal adviser has gotten conservatives to call out their attack dogs, as FOX News reports.
Koh, as Spencer has written, is a former Clinton [...]

The question has come up a lot lately, particularly since oral arguments last week in Jose Padilla’s lawsuit against John Yoo made clear that the federal judge was taking the case very seriously. After all, it was a bit odd to see Barack Obama’s Justice Department defending Yoo — who Padilla’s lawyers claim is responsible [...]

As part of its “Transitions” series, The New York Times devoted a full page Sunday to op-eds expressing varying viewpoints on what President-elect Barack Obama should do about “the legal legacy of the war on terrorism.”
It’s an odd way of framing the issue — and an inherent concession to the notion that what legal experts [...]

Monday’s news that President-elect Barack Obama and his advisers are planning to close the prison at Guantanamo Bay and prosecute some of the prisoners detained there in special national-security courts has prompted a retreat by the Obama team and swift responses by advocates on all sides.
On Tuesday, senior Obama foreign policy adviser Denis McDonough said [...]