Jose Padilla

Buried in a profile of the controversial former Justice Department lawyer John Yoo in today’s Washington Post is the casual mention that the Justice Department is no longer representing Yoo to fight a lawsuit filed against him by Jose Padilla. Instead, GOP-connected lawyer and former Bush appellate court nominee Miguel Estrada has stepped into the [...]

It wasn’t until late Friday afternoon that the Obama Justice Department, after years of wrangling over the fate of Mohammed Jawad, the Afghan boy arrested for allegedly lobbing a hand grenade at U.S. soldiers in 2002, admitted that it does not have enough evidence to continue to hold him indefinitely without trial under the laws [...]

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

Late on Friday, after some of us had long since packed up our computers, U.S. District Judge Jeffrey White in San Francisco ruled that Jose Padilla, the American citizen declared an “enemy combatant” by President George W. Bush and incarcerated at a U.S. Naval brig in South Carolina, may proceed with his lawsuit against University [...]

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.

Following up on my earlier post about whether the Obama Justice Department really ought to be representing John Yoo — the notorious former Office of Legal Counsel lawyer during the Bush administration — Michael Ratner, president of the Center for Constitutional Rights and a professor at Columbia Law School, pointed out to me today that [...]

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 [...]

Even with the Obama Justice Department on the side of John Yoo, the former Bush administration deputy assistant attorney general at the Office of Legal Counsel, a federal judge hearing former enemy combatant Jose Padilla’s lawsuit against Yoo on Friday seemed wary of dismissing the case, The New York Times reports.
The Obama administration is now [...]