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Prof. Jack Landman Goldsmith Esq.


Self Description

Third-Party Descriptions

October 2011: 'Jack Goldsmith, legal adviser in the Defense Department in the Bush Administration, argued on the blog Lawfare that "a thorough public explanation of the legal basis for the killing (and for targeted killings generally) would allow experts in the press, the academy, and Congress to scrutinize and criticize it."'

http://security.blogs.cnn.com/2011/10/25/death-of-u-s-teenager-in-drone-strike-stokes-debate

June 2011: 'The story is eloquently told in Jack Goldsmith and Tim Wu's indispensable book, Who Controls the Internet? Illusions of a Borderless World".'

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2011/06/how-france-proved-that-the-internet-is-not-global.ars

August 2009: '“Cyberwar is problematic from the point of view of the laws of war,” said Jack L. Goldsmith, a professor at Harvard Law School. “The U.N. Charter basically says that a nation cannot use force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any other nation. But what kinds of cyberattacks count as force is a hard question, because force is not clearly defined.”'

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/02/us/politics/02cyber.html

April 2008: 'Goldsmith argues that when government actors are hemmed in on all sides by domestic and international laws, they become immobilized and fearful. As he notes, "It is unimaginable that Francis Biddle or Robert Jackson would have written Franklin Roosevelt a memorandum about how to avoid prosecution for his wartime decisions designed to maintain flexibility against a new and deadly foe." It was the accumulation of all these new laws and courts and lawyers that contributed to an inability for anyone in the Bush administration to act quickly and forcefully to prevent the next attack after 9/11. According to Goldsmith, the war had been "lawyered to death," and hoards of executive-branch officials were afraid to act aggressively in fighting the next terror attack because they were terrified of the legal consequences of doing so. Thus, high-ranked government officials milled around on the sidelines waiting to be green-lighted by some attorney, in much the same way onlookers at a car crash are afraid to move the body.'

http://www.slate.com/id/2188008/

April 2008: 'In his 2007 book, The Terror Presidency, Jack Goldsmith, who took over the Office of Legal Counsel after Yoo departed, writes that the two memos "stood out" for "the unusual lack of care and sobriety in their legal analysis."'

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/04/01/AR2008040102213.html

October 2007: Jack L. Goldsmith, a Harvard law professor who led the Justice Department office that objected to a Bush administration domestic eavesdropping plan, told a Senate committee on Tuesday that the situation became a “legal mess” because the White House did not believe either the courts or Congress had any role to play.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/03/washington/03nsa.html

August 2002: Law professor specializing in  conflict of laws, public and private international law, civil procedure, and foreign affairs law.

http://www.law.uchicago.edu/faculty/goldsmith/

Relationships

RoleNameTypeLast Updated
Member (past or present) Federalist Society, The (for Law and Public Policy Studies) Organization Oct 4, 2007
Employee/Freelancer/Contractor (past or present) Harvard University Organization Oct 14, 2007
Organization Head/Leader (past or present) Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) Organization Oct 4, 2007
Employee/Freelancer/Contractor (past or present) University of Chicago Organization
Student/Trainee (past or present) Washington and Lee University (W&L) Organization
Student/Trainee (past or present) Yale University Organization
Supervisor of (past or present) Steven "Steve" G. Bradbury Esq. Person Oct 4, 2007
Successor to Judge Jay S. Bybee Esq. Person Feb 25, 2008
Cooperation (past or present) Prof. Timothy Wu Esq. Person Jun 23, 2011
Friend (past or present) Prof. John C. Yoo Esq. Person Oct 4, 2007

Articles and Resources

Date Fairness.com Resource Read it at:
Oct 25, 2011 Death of U.S. teenager in drone strike stokes debate

QUOTE: 'Proportionality' is at the heart of the argument....is it acceptable in law to carry out an attack against an identified terrorist suspect where others in his immediate vicinity - whose identities are unknown - are likely to be killed or injured?...

 CNN (Cable News Network)
Jun 22, 2011 Nazi hunting: How France first "civilized" the Internet

QUOTE: France has long attempted to "civilize" the Internet out of things like racism and Nazi ideology by curbing their dissemination. In fact, the first battle in this war concluded a decade ago. The winner was France; the loser was the then-reigning giant of the Web—Yahoo—along with the notion that the Internet is a "global" place that inherently transcends national boundaries.

 Ars Technica
Aug 01, 2009 Halted ’03 Iraq Plan Illustrates U.S. Fear of Cyberwar Risk ("Cyberwar" part 6)

QUOTE: the [cyber]attack [on Saddam Hussein's bank accounts and government funds] never got the green light. Bush administration officials worried that the effects would not be limited to Iraq but would instead create worldwide financial havoc... Fears of such collateral damage are at the heart of the debate as the Obama administration and its Pentagon leadership struggle to develop rules and tactics for carrying out attacks in cyberspace.

 New York Times
Apr 02, 2008 Memo: Laws Didn't Apply to Interrogators: Justice Dept. Official in 2003 Said President's Wartime Authority Trumped Many Statutes

QUOTE: "If a government defendant were to harm an enemy combatant during an interrogation in a manner that might arguably violate a criminal prohibition, he would be doing so in order to prevent further attacks on the United States by the al Qaeda terrorist network," [John C.] Yoo wrote. "In that case, we believe that he could argue that the executive branch's constitutional authority to protect the nation from attack justified his actions."

 Washington Post
Apr 02, 2008 Yoo Talkin' to Me? Plausible deniability, and other reasons why warfare by midlevel legal memoranda is a really bad idea.

QUOTE: What's going to happen to John Yoo is pretty much what has happened to every other lawyer who ever offered a plausible-sounding legal opinion about how to break the laws in pursuing the war on terror. Nothing. He was just doing his job. The worst thing that will happen to Yoo may be that he has to teach the dreaded 8:30 a.m. Friday class at Berkeley next year. It's the lawyers who wrote the "no" memos who lost their jobs.

 Slate
Oct 03, 2007 Panel Is Told of ‘Mess’ Over Eavesdropping

QUOTE: Professor Goldsmith told the Judiciary Committee that chances to create a legally justified program were undercut by senior White House officials who were averse to any restraint on presidential power and devoted to extreme secrecy.

 New York Times
May 17, 2007 Nixon Rides Again: It's only illegal when the president agrees it's illegal.

QUOTE: The story isn't who picked on a sick guy or even who did or didn't break laws. The story is who gets to decide what's legal. And the president's now-familiar claim, a la Richard Nixon, is that it's never illegal when he does it.

 Slate
Aug 04, 2002 After Sept. 11, a Legal Battle Over Limits of Civil Liberty

QUOTE: The roundup that followed the [9/11] attacks....has produced few if any law enforcement coups....has provoked a sprawling legal battle, now being waged in federal courthouses around the country, that experts say has begun to redefine the delicate balance between individual liberties and national security.

 New York Times