john ashcroft

The Second Circuit Court of Appeals just dismissed a landmark lawsuit filed by a Canadian victim of “extraordinary rendition” against former U.S. officials, ruling that torture victims have no right to compensation from the U.S. government, even if U.S. officials were complicit in their treatment.
Maher Arar is a Canadian citizen who was seized in 2002 [...]

Few innocent victims of post-9/11 counter-terrorism policies have been able to sustain their claims against government officials in federal courts, although many have tried.  But on Friday, a federal appeals court held that a U.S. citizen detained for more than two weeks as a “material witness” and then released under severe restrictions can sue former [...]

This is your horrible, dystopian future: John Yoo, the former Office of Legal Counsel official who had a hand in crafting the Bush administration’s detentions, interrogations and warrantless surveillance abuses, writes endless and endlessly misleading defenses of himself. Some people die because of Yoo’s cavalier relationship with the law — about 100, actually — and [...]

One warrantless surveillance mystery solved. My friend Marcy Wheeler beat me to this: George W. Bush personally ordered White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales and Chief of Staff Andy Card to visit an ailing Attorney General John Ashcroft in the hospital in March 2004 after Ashcroft’s deputy Jim Comey refused to certify the warrantless surveillance program. [...]

Ah, Alberto Gonzales. After the then-Attorney General presented a slippery account to the Senate Judiciary Committee in July 2007 of, among other subjects, the Bush administration’s warrantless surveillance efforts, a group of Democratic senators quickly moved to investigate Gonzales for perjury. The immediate issue was Gonzales’ assertion that Justice Department employees did not have “reservations” [...]

Sure, the associate attorney general for the Office of Legal Counsel at the Justice Department is supposed to be in charge of the office. But in 2001, then-OLC chief Jay Bybee “was never read into” the President’s Surveillance Program and instead, his deputy, John Yoo, was the only one in the office who would “draft [...]

Other judges will not be bound by the decision, but there are reasons for advocates to be hopeful.

Similar to the criminal component of a federal law aimed at preventing abortion violence and intimidation, civil enforcement fell dramatically under President Bush.

The Supreme Court returned the case of a Muslim Pakistani immigrant to a lower court, leaving questions about how specific a claim against a government official must be for it to be heard.

The new administration has assumed the awkward position of arguing that the case against John Yoo — whose opinions Obama administration officials have harshly criticized — should be dismissed.