Recent Highlights

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  Goldsmith in Washington Post: The Detainee Shell Game

  In a May 31, 2009 Washington Post op-ed, HLS Professor Jack Goldsmith writes, “The revelation last weekend that the United States is increasingly using foreign intelligence services to capture, interrogate and detain terrorist suspects points up an uncomfortable truth about the war against Islamist terrorists. Demands to raise legal standards for terrorist suspects in one arena often lead to compensating tactics in another arena that leave suspects (and, sometimes, innocent civilians) worse off.”

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  Goldsmith in The New Republic: The Cheney Fallacy

  In his op-ed “The Cheney Fallacy,” HLS Professor Jack Goldsmith discusses why he believes Barack Obama is waging a more effective war on terror than George W. Bush. The op-ed was published in the May 18, 2009, issue of The New Republic. Goldsmith, a member of the Hoover Institution Task Force on National Security and Law, was an assistant attorney general in the Bush administration and is the author of “The Terror Presidency: Law and Judgment Inside the Bush Administration.”

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  Feldman in NYT: A Prison of Words

  Has the Obama administration changed the legal rules for detaining suspects in the war on terrorism, or is it continuing in the footsteps of the Bush administration? HLS Professor Noah Feldman explores the question in an op-ed, “A Prison of Words,” that appeared in the March 19 edition of The New York Times.

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  JAG offers an insider’s account of defending GITMO detainee

  Major David J. R. Frakt ’94, a U.S. Air Force JAG officer, discussed his ongoing representation of a detainee in the war on terror, in a February 23 panel discussion at HLS. The event was sponsored by the American Constitution Society, the National Security and Law Association and the Harvard Human Rights Journal. Copies of Frakt’s article, “Closing Argument at Guantánamo: The Torture of Mohammed Jawad,” which will soon appear in the Human Rights Journal, were distributed to the audience.

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  The War and the Writ: Habeas corpus and security in an age of terrorism

  Huzaifa Parhat, a fruit peddler, has been imprisoned at Guantánamo Bay Detention Center for the last seven years. He is not a terrorist. He’s a mistake, a victim of the war against al Qaeda. An interrogator first told him that the military knew he was not a threat to the United States in 2002.

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  The government’s top tracker of terrorist assets got his start with an HLS fellowship

  There’s a saying: Do what you love, and the money will follow. For Adam Szubin ’99, it’s a little different: With some early help from a Heyman Fellowship, he’s been able to do what he loves—and follow the money.

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  Goldsmith and Waxman survey the post-9/11 terrain of constitutional law

  At a Dean’s Forum moderated by HLS Dean Elena Kagan ’86, Seth Waxman was joined by Professor Jack Goldsmith for a wide-ranging discussion of Boumediene v. Bush and the three earlier cases in which the Court has addressed post-9/11 constitutional and statutory questions.

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  HLS Constitutional law scholars tackle separation of powers in war-time

  While it’s not unusual for law professors to testify on Capitol Hill, the twin appearances by HLS faculty members that week neatly symbolized the urgency and importance of constitutional expertise and scholarship in wartime—and the prominent contributions that HLS professors have been making lately in some critical national debates.

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  Panelists discuss the laws of fighting terrorism

  Experts on terrorism were on hand for a panel discussion titled “Dealing with Terrorism: What Congress and the President Should Do.” The panelists discussed what changes they think should be adopted to better deal with the legal issues that have become controversial in dealing with the war on terror, including interrogation techniques, detention facilities, surveillance, and torture.

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  HLS students who served in Iraq give their perspectives on the war

  Last week, five current Harvard Law School students who have served or are currently serving in the U.S. armed forces spoke to a packed audience about their experiences in Iraq. Panelists Robert Merrill '08, Geoff Orazem '09, Erik Swabb '09, Hagan Scotten '10, and Kurt White '10 each drew upon their varied military posts during the invasion, the Second Battle of Fallujah, and counterinsurgency operations, to explain what it is like to serve as a junior officer in Iraq.