E-mail:
Jack Balkin: jackbalkin at yahoo.com
Bruce Ackerman bruce.ackerman at yale.edu
Ian Ayres ian.ayres at yale.edu
Corey Brettschneider corey_brettschneider at brown.edu
Mary Dudziak mary.l.dudziak at emory.edu
Joey Fishkin joey.fishkin at gmail.com
Heather Gerken heather.gerken at yale.edu
Abbe Gluck abbe.gluck at yale.edu
Mark Graber mgraber at law.umaryland.edu
Stephen Griffin sgriffin at tulane.edu
Jonathan Hafetz jonathan.hafetz at shu.edu
Jeremy Kessler jkessler at law.columbia.edu
Andrew Koppelman akoppelman at law.northwestern.edu
Marty Lederman msl46 at law.georgetown.edu
Sanford Levinson slevinson at law.utexas.edu
David Luban david.luban at gmail.com
Gerard Magliocca gmaglioc at iupui.edu
Jason Mazzone mazzonej at illinois.edu
Linda McClain lmcclain at bu.edu
John Mikhail mikhail at law.georgetown.edu
Frank Pasquale pasquale.frank at gmail.com
Nate Persily npersily at gmail.com
Michael Stokes Paulsen michaelstokespaulsen at gmail.com
Deborah Pearlstein dpearlst at yu.edu
Rick Pildes rick.pildes at nyu.edu
David Pozen dpozen at law.columbia.edu
Richard Primus raprimus at umich.edu
K. Sabeel Rahmansabeel.rahman at brooklaw.edu
Alice Ristroph alice.ristroph at shu.edu
Neil Siegel siegel at law.duke.edu
David Super david.super at law.georgetown.edu
Brian Tamanaha btamanaha at wulaw.wustl.edu
Nelson Tebbe nelson.tebbe at brooklaw.edu
Mark Tushnet mtushnet at law.harvard.edu
Adam Winkler winkler at ucla.edu
ProPublica has published a list of OLC Memos relating to the Bush Administration's war on terror, including both published memos and those which are secret but whose essential contents they have been able to discern from other publicly available information. The topics of some of these still secret memos are, to put it mildly, eye-opening, including memos about American interrogators' immunity from prosecution under the War Crimes Act, the President's authority to detain U.S. citizens, the President's authority to engage in extraordinary rendition, the legality of various NSA intelligence gathering activities (which include domestic as well as foreign surveillance), the analysis of specific interrogation practices and the approval of specific CIA interrogation techniques. These memos provided the legal justifications that the Administration relied on to engage in torture and domestic surveillance.
As I argued in my New York Times Op-ed a few weeks back, one of the first things the Obama Administration must do is make these OLC memos public, to the extent that doing so will not seriously damage national security. At the very least it should release redacted versions of these memos or summaries.
Secret laws corrode the foundations of democratic government. One of the reasons why the Bush Administration was able to do so much mischief to our constitutional system and to violate human rights without accountability is that its lawyers used a system of secret opinions to legitimate whatever the Administrations sought to do. These are practices that must be reformed immediately by the new Administration. Posted
5:24 PM
by JB [link]