Anthony Clark Arend

It is quite unfortunate that there has been any opposition to the appointment of Yale Law School Dean Harold Koh to be Legal Adviser at the Department of State. Koh is a brilliant, world-reknowned international legal scholar who previously served in a variety of U.S. Government posts, including Assistant Secretary of State for Human Rights, Democracy, and Labor during the …

Lana Dajani has just written a children’s book, My Letter to President Barack Obama. From the publisher’s website:
Ella is an ordinary schoolgirl with extraordinary drive and passion. She is determined to make a difference in her community. In “My Letter to President Barack Obama”, Ella leads by example and shows that children everywhere can express their opinions on important issues.

Andrew Sullivan dug up Ronald Reagan’s message to the Senate when he submited  the Convention Against Torture in 1988 for advice and consent. Reagan wrote:

The United States participated actively and effectively in the negotiation of the Convention . It marks a significant step in the development during this century of international measures against torture and other inhuman treatment or punishment. …

Did the decision to undertake harsh interrogation techniques– techniques amounting to torture– come about because of a study of their past effectiveness? Apparently not. The New York Times is reporting:
The program began with Central Intelligence Agency leaders in the grip of an alluring idea: They could get tough in terrorist interrogations without risking legal trouble by adopting a set of …

Since the publication of Joe Nye’s op ed in the Washington Post on the relevance of the academy to policy, there has been much discussion in the blogosphere. Dan Drezner, for example, has responded. Here we have a video response from the folks over at Duck of Minverva.

In the wake of the recent release of additional Deparment of Justice memoranda on interrogation and the news about more potential violations of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act by the Bush Administration, many commentators are renewing a call for accountability. In an editorial today, the New York Times targets the high-level Bush officials who crafted the legal arguments that led …

Yesterday, the Department of Justice released four more previously-classified memoranda produced by the Office of Legal Cousel during the Bush Administration. The first memo, dated August 1, 2002, was requested by the Office of General Counsel at the CIA. which was seeking legal advice on ten specific interrogation techniques that were being contemplated for use against al Qaeda leader Abu …

Scott Horton over at The Daily Beast reports:
In a dramatic turn in Madrid this morning, Spain’s attorney general has stepped into the case involving former U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and five former senior Bush administration lawyers, overruling the decision of career prosecutors to adopt a criminal complaint against them and to proceed with an investigation. But this does not …