Benjamin Wittes Quotes
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The nature of the job of attorney general has changed - irrevocably. And we should never again have an attorney general, of either party, capable of expressing surprise at the role that national security issues now play in the life of the Justice Department or in the role of its chief.
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Drosnin's 'The Bible Code' would hardly be worth mentioning were it not such a smash hit.
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President Obama's decision not to go to Congress for help in establishing reasonable standards for the continued detention of Guantanamo detainees is a failure of leadership in the project of putting American law on a sound basis for a long-term confrontation with terrorism. It is bad for the country, for national security, and for civil liberties.
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Secret courts require great faith that the Justice Department - and future Justice Departments - will act with integrity.
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Recommended additon to the Consumer Privacy Bill of Rights: "A right to not have your data rise up and attack you."
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The notion of law enforcement as professional, not political, began developing as an aspiration and an ethos even while, in practice, the FBI was the personal fiefdom of J. Edgar Hoover.
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You cannot denude the presidency of the substance and power of its office. It can't be done.
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While I oppose the death penalty as a policy matter, in a legal culture in which we reserve the right to execute people for relatively routine street crimes, it seems quite absurd for the justice system to get squeamish about executing the operational masterminds of Sept. 11.
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There is no doubt in my mind that Article II limits to a considerable degree the application of the obstruction statutes to the president when he is acting in his capacity as chief law-enforcement officer of the country.
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The idea that the president doesn't interfere in law-enforcement investigative matters is one of our deep normative expectations of the modern presidency. But it is not a matter of law. Legally, if the president of the United States wants to direct the specific conduct of investigations, that is his constitutional prerogative.
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Reasonable people can disagree about the authorities the NSA should have, when it's appropriate for the CIA to use drone strikes, and how assertive U.S. foreign policy and intelligence should be.
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I've got no problem with drone strikes.
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Once upon a time, science, philosophy, and theology were disciplines largely undifferentiated from one another, and proving the existence of God was a fairly commonplace intellectual exercise. But as the scientific method became increasingly refined, particularly through the nineteenth century, science and religion grew apart.
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If you believe, as I do, that the scope and range of presidential authority is great, that puts a lot of weight on the civic virtue and decency of the individual who holds the office.
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In general, liberals fear conservative judges far too much. In almost all areas, in fact, they dramatically overstate the stakes.
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I generally favor permissive abortion laws.
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I'm an unabashed apologist for strong national-security authority. That's why I might be more alarmed by Trump.
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I don't doubt that there are many presidential acts that would constitute obstructions of justice if anyone but the president engaged in them but which constitute legitimate exercises of presidential power when the president engages in them.
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I'm positively enthusiastic about American surveillance policies.
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As a general matter, if the president wants to withdraw from a treaty, he simply gets to do that. And that's part of the powers of the office.
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Eric Holder is a decent man.
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Conservatives complain that the Supreme Court is too liberal. Liberals complain that it's too conservative. Both charges are inaccurate: in reality the Court is a careful political actor that arguably represents the center of gravity of American politics better than most politicians do.
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When it comes to letting kids out into dark alleys, we understand that they have things to steal. We need to understand that in online life, too.
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If the 'enemy combatant' cases of Padilla and Hamdi present a clash between liberty and security, each side champions one while giving short shrift to the other.