Unchecked and Unbalanced
Book Review
By MICHIKO KAKUTANI
New York Times
Days after 9/11, Bush administration lawyers began laying out a vision of sweeping executive power, designed to give the president authority, in the words of John C. Yoo, then deputy assistant attorney general, “to take whatever actions he deems appropriate to pre-empt or respond to terrorist threats from new quarters,” whether or not they can be linked to the specific terrorist incidents of Sept. 11. A Sept. 25, 2001, Justice Department memo declared that under the Constitution decisions regarding the “amount of military force to be used” in response to the terrorist threat, as well as “the method, timing and nature of the response,” are “for the President alone to make.” And a January 2002 Justice Department memo argued that “customary international law has no binding legal effect on either the President or the military.”
In fact, as this important book, “Unchecked and Unbalanced,” points out, the Bush White House has repeatedly sought to expand its powers, often doing so in secret, while sidelining both Congress and the judiciary. President Bush secretly authorized the National Security Agency to eavesdrop without obtaining a court order on calls and e-mail messages sent from the United States to other countries. He has issued a steady stream of signing statements, signaling his intent not to comply with more than 750 provisions of laws concerning national security and disclosure, most notably one that questioned Congress’s authority to limit coercive interrogation tactics. And the administration has claimed that the president’s war powers give him the authority to detain people indefinitely and deny them access to lawyers and the courts, a policy that it would later be forced to modify in response to legal challenges.
In their chilling and timely book Frederick A. O. Schwarz Jr., senior counsel at the Brennan Center for Justice at the New York University School of Law, and Aziz Z. Huq, who directs the Liberty and National Security Project at the Brennan Center, argue that the Bush administration’s “monarchist claims of executive power” are “unprecedented on this side of the North Atlantic,” and that its “executive unilateralism not only undermines the delicate balance of our Constitution, but also lessens our human liberties and hurts vital counterterrorism campaigns” by undermining America’s moral authority and standing in the world.
(Continued here.)
By MICHIKO KAKUTANI
New York Times
Days after 9/11, Bush administration lawyers began laying out a vision of sweeping executive power, designed to give the president authority, in the words of John C. Yoo, then deputy assistant attorney general, “to take whatever actions he deems appropriate to pre-empt or respond to terrorist threats from new quarters,” whether or not they can be linked to the specific terrorist incidents of Sept. 11. A Sept. 25, 2001, Justice Department memo declared that under the Constitution decisions regarding the “amount of military force to be used” in response to the terrorist threat, as well as “the method, timing and nature of the response,” are “for the President alone to make.” And a January 2002 Justice Department memo argued that “customary international law has no binding legal effect on either the President or the military.”
In fact, as this important book, “Unchecked and Unbalanced,” points out, the Bush White House has repeatedly sought to expand its powers, often doing so in secret, while sidelining both Congress and the judiciary. President Bush secretly authorized the National Security Agency to eavesdrop without obtaining a court order on calls and e-mail messages sent from the United States to other countries. He has issued a steady stream of signing statements, signaling his intent not to comply with more than 750 provisions of laws concerning national security and disclosure, most notably one that questioned Congress’s authority to limit coercive interrogation tactics. And the administration has claimed that the president’s war powers give him the authority to detain people indefinitely and deny them access to lawyers and the courts, a policy that it would later be forced to modify in response to legal challenges.
In their chilling and timely book Frederick A. O. Schwarz Jr., senior counsel at the Brennan Center for Justice at the New York University School of Law, and Aziz Z. Huq, who directs the Liberty and National Security Project at the Brennan Center, argue that the Bush administration’s “monarchist claims of executive power” are “unprecedented on this side of the North Atlantic,” and that its “executive unilateralism not only undermines the delicate balance of our Constitution, but also lessens our human liberties and hurts vital counterterrorism campaigns” by undermining America’s moral authority and standing in the world.
(Continued here.)
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