Jack Goldsmith
Jack Goldsmith | |
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Jay S. Bybee | |
Succeeded by | Daniel Levin (acting) |
Personal details | |
Born | Jack Landman Goldsmith III September 26, 1962 ) |
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Conservatism in the United States |
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Jack Landman Goldsmith III (born September 26, 1962) is an American legal scholar. He serves as the Learned Hand Professor of Law at Harvard Law School, where he has written extensively in the fields of international law, civil procedure, federal courts, conflict of laws, and national security law.[2] Writing in The New York Times, Jeffrey Rosen described him as being "widely considered one of the brightest stars in the conservative legal firmament".[3]
In addition to being a professor at Harvard, Goldsmith is a senior fellow at the
Early life and career
Goldsmith was born in 1962 in Memphis, Tennessee. His stepfather, Charles "Chuckie" O'Brien, is widely believed to have played a role in the disappearance of Jimmy Hoffa.[5] Goldsmith graduated from Pine Crest School in 1980.
After high school, Goldsmith attended
After law school, Goldsmith was a
In 2002, Goldsmith joined the Bush administration as the Special Counsel to
George W. Bush administration
In August 2002, before Goldsmith joined the
In addition, on March 14, 2003, after Goldsmith had been hired to work as a legal adviser to the
Office of General Counsel of the Department of Defense
By September 2002, Jack Goldsmith had been hired to work as a legal adviser to the General Counsel of the Department of Defense, William J. Haynes II.[3]
Goldsmith accompanied Haynes late that month as one of a large party of senior government appointees who traveled to military detention facilities at Guantanamo,
Office of Legal Counsel, Department of Justice
In October 2003, Goldsmith was appointed to head the
In April and May 2004, the
On June 30, 2004, Goldsmith withdrew as legally defective the
However, Goldsmith had been unable to have his office complete what he intended as the replacement legal opinions before he resigned.[11] He said later that he felt that he had lost the confidence of the administration. By December 2004, the replacement counsel at the Office of Legal Counsel had reaffirmed the previous legal opinions.
Goldsmith later said that one consequence of the Office of Legal Counsel's "power to interpret the law is the power to bestow on government officials what is effectively an advance pardon for actions taken at the edges of vague criminal statutes."[12]
Warrantless wiretapping memos
During Goldsmith's tenure at the Office of Legal Counsel, he wrote at least two legal memos authorizing a program known as Stellar Wind. His memos said that the president has inherent constitutional power in a time of war to monitor Americans' communications without a warrant.
In March 2004, the Office of Legal Counsel concluded the e-mail program was not legal. Acting Attorney General James Comey refused to reauthorize it.[13] On May 6, 2004, Goldsmith wrote in a 108-page memo:
"We conclude only that when the nation has been thrust into an armed conflict by a foreign attack on the United States and the president determines in his role as commander in chief... that it is essential for defense against a further foreign attack to use the [wiretapping] capabilities of the [National Security Agency] within the United States, he has inherent constitutional authority" to order warrantless wiretapping—"an authority that Congress cannot curtail.”[13]
Scholarship
Goldsmith has published four books about law and policy, Power and Constraint, Who Controls the Internet, The Terror Presidency, and The Limits of International Law.
His fifth book is more personal: In Hoffa's Shadow: A Stepfather, A Disappearance in Detroit, and My Search for the Truth, published in the fall of 2019. In this memoir, Goldsmith explores who killed labor leader Jimmy Hoffa. He reveals the perennial mystery's connections to both broader American historical and economic trends, and Goldsmith's own family. Goldsmith's stepfather was Charles "Chuckie" O'Brien, who had lived with Hoffa and his family as a child and young adult. He later followed Hoffa into the union, and they remained associated. In 2001, the FBI found Hoffa's DNA in a 1975 Mercury car that O'Brien had borrowed after it was owned by a mobster. He denied Hoffa was ever in the car and said he was not involved in his disappearance that year.
Goldsmith is also an editor of three leading legal casebooks, including Foreign Relations Law, Conflicts of Law, and Federal Courts and the Federal System casebook.
Power and Constraint
This book argues that the presidency after the 9/11 attacks was much more constrained and accountable than conventional wisdom suggests. Goldsmith asserts that the president is constantly under scrutiny and checked inside and outside the executive branch by variously motivated actors—courts and Congress, but also lawyers, inspectors general, ethics watchdogs, journalists, and civil society—who generate information about what the executive branch is doing, who force it to explain its actions, and who are empowered to change these actions when the explanations fail to convince. Goldsmith labels these multiple forms of watching and checking the presidency a "presidential synopticon," and claims that this synopticon reined in the George W. Bush administration's early excesses in the "war on terrorism," creating a consensus on counterterrorism policies by 2008 that explained the Obama administration's then-surprising decision not to change the counterterrorism policies it inherited in material ways. Goldsmith concludes that the presidential synopticon's constraints on the presidency also paradoxically empowers the presidency by making its counterterrorism actions more legitimate. But it also produces "unhappy consequences, including the harmful disclosure of national security secrets, misjudgments by the watchers of the presidency, and burdensome legal scrutiny that slows executive action." Goldsmith discussed the book on
The Terror Presidency
In 2007, Goldsmith published The Terror Presidency, a memoir about his work in the
He wrote that
Goldsmith said he resigned in 2004 largely because he felt he had lost the confidence of administration leaders. He notes that the White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales asked him to remain, while Addington, an influential White House figure, asked which other OLC opinions he intended to overturn. Goldsmith wrote in his book, "Nobody had said no to them before."[14]
To discuss his book, Goldsmith appeared on the
Goldsmith also appeared on the
Soon after, on
Who Controls the Internet: Illusions of a Borderless World
Goldsmith co-authored
The Limits of International Law
Goldsmith co-authored this book with University of Chicago Law School Professor Eric Posner. The book is mainly an effort to give a descriptive theoretical account of how international law (treaties and customary international law) works, using basic game theoretical models.
Legal scholarship
In addition to his popular writing and books, Goldsmith is one of the country's leading scholars of the executive branch, international and foreign relations law, and Internet regulation having written dozens of academic papers[17] in such journals as The Yale Law Journal and the Harvard Law Review. He has authored or co-authored the following articles, inter alia:
Foreign relations law
- "Treaties, Human Rights, and Conditional Consent," 149 U. Pa. L. Rev. 399 (2000)
- "The Abiding Relevance of Federalism to U.S. Foreign Relations," 92 Am. J. Int'l L. 675 (1998)
- "Sosa, Customary International Law, and Continuing Relevance of Erie," 120 Harv. L. Rev. 869 (2007)
- "Customary International Law as Federal Common Law: A Critique of the Modern Position," 110 Harv. L. Rev. 816 (1997)
- "Federal Courts, Foreign Affairs, and Federalism," 83 U. Va. L. Rev. 1617 (1997)
- "Zivotofsky II as Precedent in the Executive Branch," 129 Harv. L. Rev. 112 (2015)
- "Presidential Control over International Law," 131 Harv. L. Rev. 1201 (2018)
- "Statutory Foreign Affairs Preemption," 2000 Sup. Ct. Rev. 175 (2001)
- "The New Formalism in United States Foreign Relations Law," 70 U. Colo. L. Rev. 1395 (1999)
- "Pinochet and International Human Rights Litigation," 97 U. Mich. L. Rev. 2129 (1999)
War and national security law
- "Terrorism and the Convergence of Criminal and Military Detention Models," 60 Stan. L. Rev. 1079 (2008)
- "Congressional Authorization and the War on Terrorism," 118 Harv. L. Rev. 2047 (2005)
- "Obama's AUMF Legacy," 110 Am. J. Int'l L. 628 (2016)
International law
- "Law for States: International Law, Constitutional Law, Public Law,"122 Harv. L. Rev. 1791 (2009)
- "Obama's Contribution to International Law," 57 Harv. Int'l L.J. (2016)
- "The Limits of Idealism," 132 Daedulus 47 (2003)
- "Moral and Legal Rhetoric in International Relations: A Rational Choice Perspective," 21 J. Leg. Stud. S115 (2002)
- "A Theory of Customary International Law," 66 U. Chi. L. Rev. 1113 (1999)
Executive branch lawyering and the presidency
- "Executive Branch Crisis Lawyering and the Best View," Georg. J. Leg. Ethics 261 (2018)
- "The Irrelevance of Prerogative Power and the Evils of Secret Legal Interpretation," in Extra-Legal Power and Legitimacy: Perspectives on Prerogative (2013)
- "Executive Branch Crisis Lawyering and the Best View," Georg. J. Leg. Ethics 261 (2018)
- "The Protean Take Care Clause," 164 Penn. L. Rev. 1835 (2016)
- "The President's Completion Power," 115 Yale L.J. 2280 (2006)
Internet regulation
- "Against Cyberanarchy," 65 Chi. L. Rev. 1199 (1998)
- "The Internet and the Dormant Commerce Clause," 110 Yale L.J. 785 (2001)
Film
The Special Program, a screenplay exploring Goldsmith's experiences in the Department of Justice's Office of Legal Counsel, was sold to The Weinstein Company on December 16, 2013. According to the Spec Scout database, as of November 21, 2014, this project was "no longer set up with the Weinstein Company."[18]
Goldsmith questions a key premise of Martin Scorsese's 2019 film The Irishman due to the information he gathered for his own book about unions in the U.S., his stepfather Chuckie O'Brien, who was an associate of Jimmy Hoffa, and Hoffa's mysterious disappearance.[19]
Books
- Power and Constraint. ISBN 978-0-393-33533-0.
- The Terror Presidency. ISBN 978-0-393-06550-3.
- ISBN 0-19-515266-2
- The Limits of International Law (with Eric Posner). ISBN 0-19-516839-9.
- In Hoffa's Shadow: A Stepfather, a Disappearance in Detroit, and My Search for the Truth. ISBN 978-0-37417565-8.
- After Trump: Reconstructing the Presidency.
See also
References
- ^ "About". jackgoldsmith.org. Retrieved June 2, 2017.
- ^ "Jack Landman Goldsmith". Harvard Law School.
- ^ a b c d e f Rosen, Jeffrey (September 9, 2007). "Conscience of a Conservative". New York Times Magazine. Retrieved September 5, 2007.
- ^ "Welcome to Lawfare". Lawfare. September 1, 2010.
- New York Times Book Review. October 27, 2019.
- Slate.com.
- ^ "Palace Revolt". MSNBC. Archived from the original on February 8, 2006.
- ^ Isikoff, Michael (April 5, 2008). "A Top Pentagon Lawyer Faces a Senate Grilling On Torture". Newsweek. Retrieved January 18, 2013.
- ^ a b Mayer, Jane, The Dark Side: The Inside Story of How the War on Terror Turned Into a War on American Ideals, 2008. p. 199
- ^ Klaidman, Daniel (September 8, 2007). "The Law Required It". Newsweek.
- ^ "#418: 06-17-04 Assistant Attorney General Jack Goldsmith to Step Down". Department of Justice (Press release). July 30, 2004. Retrieved December 15, 2010.
- ^ Wheeler, Marcy (May 18, 2009). "The 13 people who made torture possible". Salon.com.
- ^ a b Nakashima, Ellen (September 6, 2014). "Legal memos released on Bush-era justification for warrantless wiretapping". Washington Post.
- ISBN 978-0-393-06550-3.
- ^ Moyers, Bill (September 7, 2007). "Interview: Jack Goldsmith".
- ^ "After Guantanamo". Now on PBS. PBS. 19:00.
- ^ Link (Archived July 17, 2019, at the Wayback Machine)
- ^ "The Special Program". Spec Scout. Archived from the original on March 5, 2016. Retrieved September 26, 2014.
- ^ Goldsmith, Jack (September 26, 2019). "Jimmy Hoffa and 'The Irishman': A True Crime Story?". The New York Review of Books. Retrieved November 6, 2019.
External links
- Jack Goldsmith on X
- Appearances on C-SPAN
- Goldsmith, Jack, "Why the U.S. shouldn't try Julian Assange", Op-ed, The Washington Post, February 10, 2011.
- Goldsmith, Jack, "Yes, Trump Is Being Held Accountable", Op-ed, The New York Times, March 15, 2017.