The Terror Presidency: Law and Judgment Inside the Bush Administration by Jack Goldsmith

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(Hardcover)

  • Pub. Date: September 2007
  • 256pp
  • Sales Rank: 131,135
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    Product Details

    • Pub. Date: September 2007
    • Publisher: Norton, W. W. & Company, Inc.
    • Format: Hardcover, 256pp
    • Sales Rank: 131,135

    Synopsis

    A central player's account of the clash between the rule of law and the necessity of defending America.

    Jack Goldsmith's duty as head of the Office of Legal Counsel was to advise President Bush what he could and could not do...legally. Goldsmith took the job in October 2003 and began to review the work of his predecessors. Their opinions were the legal framework governing the conduct of the military and intelligence agencies in the war on terror, and he found many—especially those regulating the treatment and interrogation of prisoners—that were deeply flawed.

    Goldsmith is a conservative lawyer who understands the imperative of averting another 9/11. But his unflinching insistence that we abide by the law put him on a collision course with powerful figures in the administration. Goldsmith's fascinating analysis of parallel legal crises in the Lincoln and Roosevelt administrations shows why Bush's apparent indifference to human rights has damaged his presidency and, perhaps, his standing in history. 8 pages of photographs.

    The New York Times Book Review - Anthony Lewis

    …the record of Bush and his lawyers on torture…is grippingly examined by Jack Goldsmith in The Terror Presidency. Goldsmith is a conservative Harvard law professor who was assistant attorney general in charge of the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel for nine months in 2003-4. That is where official government opinions on the law are prepared. John Yoo, a deputy assistant attorney general in the office, prepared the 2002 opinion defining torture narrowly and asserting that the president had supreme power to order its use. Goldsmith withdrew that opinion and replaced it with a much more modest one. It took courage to do that, because he was treated as a traitor by some in the administration—notably David Addington, then Vice President Cheney's counsel, now his chief of staff. And it has taken courage to write this book…Goldsmith's arguments are the more convincing because they are not premised on traditional liberal or civil libertarian views.

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    Biography

    Jack L. Goldsmith is the Henry L. Shattuck Professor of Law at Harvard University. From October 2003 to June 2004 he was assistant attorney general, Office of Legal Counsel. He lives in Newton, Massachusetts.

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