Law

SCOTUS Reins in President

COMMENTARY
The U.S. Supreme Court doesn't like to be powerless. In the case of a Guantanamo detainee, justices have capped presidential power.

Captain Kangaroo's Wacky Guantanamo War-Crimes Trials

Speaking of kangaroo courts, Josh White had a great piece in the Washington Post yesterday about the military tribunals, known as military commissions, currently underway for the 9/11 conspirators held at Guantanamo. (The Justice Dept. is taking the position that last week's Boumediene ruling doesn't affect the tribunals.) The cases against them are, in many respects, predicated on classified information. A basic feature of any adversarial system of justice -- and particularly, you know, ours -- is that the accused has the right to view the evidence against him or her. Oh well.

Boumediene: Victory of Law

The decision also raises questions about the future of the Guantanamo Bay facility's 270 detainees.

Carl Levin on Boumediene

Fresh from the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee:

Office of Special Counsel: What's the Real Story?

The Wall Street Journal gets the gas face today for writing an entire story about an Office of Special Counsel investigation without mentioning that the government watchdog is itself being investigated.

The Journal dutifully reports that the Special Counsel has launched a sweeping probe into 32 different whistleblower complaints filed by Federal Aviation Administration Employees. The complaints follow-up on Congressional scrutiny about the FAA allegedly silencing inspectors who reported safety problems at Southwest Airlines.

Why, It's Almost As If The War On Terror Is On Shaky Constitutional Footing

Breaking news about Guantanamo Bay from the SCOTUS:
 

Guantanamo Trial Unraveling

The case of Omar Khadr shows why the U.S. shouldn't use new procedures for terrorism prosecutions

Can Canada Sway SCOTUS?

At the end of June, the Supreme Court is due to issue a ruling in the Guantanamo Bay habeas corpus case. A similar Canadian decision raises intriguing questions.

Legal Theory Seeks to Curtail Tort Cases

A House committee hopes to prevent the spread of a legal doctrine that shields industry from consumer lawsuits.

The Berkeley Tempest

For one Berkeley professor, a recently released torture memo authored by Yoo raises questions about the meaning of academic freedom.

Torture and the Law

Bush told ABC news he knew administration officials met to discuss the use of torture against detainees. Could a prosecutor charge him with a crime?

Spitzer Violated the Public Trust -- Potentially the Mann Act

The Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington has launched far reaching investigations the past year into corrupt lawmakers and White House secrecy. But now the watchdog is chartering new waters: New York Governor Eliot Spitzer's potential violation of the Mann Act.

Court of the People?

The judiciary deserves a look these days, with the next president expected to replace two or three aging Supreme Court Justices.

EFF, ACLU Intervene in Wikileaks Case

Last week a Federal judge in San Francisco "shutdown" the whistleblower site Wikileaks over a private dispute between a Cayman Islands bank and a disgruntled former employee. The former employee posted company documents to Wikileaks, which the bank claims violated a confidentiality agreement and banking laws.

 

Online rights group, Electronic Frontier Foundation and the ACLU have now intervened in the lawsuit, the bank filed against the site and Dynadot, Wikileaks' domain registrar. EFF and ACLU argue that Judge Jeffrey S. White should not have ordered the closure of the entire site -- an unecessarily far-reaching move.

The Supreme Court v. Reality: FDA Version

Today the Supreme Court ruled 8-1 that you can't sue a manufacturer for a defective medical device if the Food and Drug Administration has already approved the device. Legally, perhaps, the decision has its merits. But practically the decision ignores the myriad scandals surrounding the agency that call its core competency into question.

When Congress and the President Face Off

Unseating the ruling party in Congress doesn't mean taking power, but that's your Constitution at work.

Wikileaks 'Shutdown'

A federal judge in San Francisco ordered Web-hosting company Dynadot to pull the plug on Wikileaks today, a site created for goverment and corporate whistleblowes with documents "that the world needs to see." The judge handed down the permanent injunction after a Cayman Islands bank  sued when company documents appeared on the site. The federal judge's move, of course, doesn't actually delete Wikileaks, which was designed to withstand court-ordered shutdowns. The site -- reportedly started by a group of international political dissidents, mathematicians and journalists -- is still accessible via its IP address and mirror sites.

Habeas Case Quietly Heads to Supreme Court

The case demands attention because it presents in stark relief two key questions of governments extraterritorial detentions.

In Solidarity With TPM Muckraker

This is an easy call, especially since Laura and I used to work for Talking Points Memo. But every journalist and citizen of conscience should stand shoulder-to-shoulder with TPM now that the Justice Department has engaged in a sickening course of petty retaliation.

 

In late 2006 and 2007, TPM's Josh Marshall, Paul Kiel and Justin Rood relentlessly pursued the U.S. attorney firings. It wasn't easy, either substantively, or against the media tide. Jay Carney at Time sneered, "some liberals are seeing broad partisan conspiracies where none likely exist." Well, they existed. Without TPM, Alberto Gonzales would still be attorney general. Simple and plain.

Padilla Case Finds a Justice System Failing to Adapt

Six years after 9/11, the jury is still out on whether the American justice system is up to the challenge of dealing with terrorism.