- ISBN13: 9780700616435
- Condition: NEW
- Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
Product Description
From wiretapping American citizens to waterboarding foreign prisoners, the Bush administration has triggered an uproar over its tactics in the War on Terror–and over its justifications for using them. Through a close study of the legal advice provided to President Bush, former Justice Department attorney Harold Bruff provides an incisive and scathing critique of those justifications, which he finds at odds with both American law and moral authority. Bruff rigorously examines legal opinions regarding NSA surveillance, the indefinite detention of terror suspects, the denial of Geneva Convention protection, trial by military commissions, and suspect interrogation techniques. He shows that Bush’s claims of exec… More >>
Bad Advice: Bush’s Lawyers in the War on Terror
Related posts:
- Kill All the Lawyers?: Shakespeare’s Legal Appeal
- If Obama was a criminal defense lawyer would he be famous for his “Bush Defense”?
- Private Lawyers and the Public Interest: The Evolving Role of Pro Bono in the Legal Profession
- Family Lawyer…? advice to become one?
- Great African-American Lawyers: Raising the Bar of Freedom
5 Comments
The author does not understand the principles underlying the legal bases for enhanced interrogations or purposely misstates them in order to reach his conclusions, which are politically biased and not based on the law. Not recommended.
The author deals in nuanced depth with issues that are both immediate and have far reaching long term implications, demonstrating passion for our legal traditions and constitution, but not for any one particular “side”. The analysis is both comprehensive and persuasive, but, even more important, wholly accessible. Bruff demonstrates that someone who is a genuine master of a subject can explain it clearly to any intelligent person, whether or not they come to it with a professional’s experience and background. That is why even non-lawyers witn an interest in how the law interacts with policy where the rubber hits the road will enjoy receiving their own “Bad Advice”.
For anyone wishing to understand the legal issues and exigencies facing the post 9/11 administration this is a must read. A tightly constructed and well documented analysis of the constitution, statutes and precedent lays the groundwork for the author’s analysis of the advice given and the consequent actions of the administration in the War on Terror. The chronology of actions and events finally makes sense of those many years. Very timely.
Bad Advice: Bush’s Lawyers in the War on Terror
Are you confused by all the reports of what was going on in the White House when one branch of our government sanctioned torture? This book identifies all the players, gathers all the details and sorts it all out in an orderly fashion. It filters what happened through the lens of time and how our three branches of government worked together both successfully and unsuccessfully over the last two hundred years to set our country’s policies. Have a copy of the Constitution at hand while you read this book and determine for yourself how things went wrong.
In this powerful and telling book, professor of law at the University of Colorado and former Justice Department official Harold R. Bruff investigates one of the most controversial issues to appear in recent American history, the excess of actions by the Bush administration in the period since 9/11 to prosecute an expansive war on terror. The author undertakes a deep analysis of legal opinions offered by Prfesident Bush’s Justice Department, ones that he finds much falut with. These include decisions to allow NSA surveillance and wiretapping without the common attributes of warrants, rendition of suspects to other nations, the indefinite detention of terror suspects without trial, the abrogation of the Geneva Conventions for those captured, replacement of civil law enforcement processes by military commissions, and interrogation techniques that have traditionally been condemned as torture.
Most important, Harold Bruff, argues that these efforts represented a significant restructuring of American civil liberties. He offers a scathing critique of these efforts. In the end this “Bad Advice,” in Bruff’s estimation, moved the American nation far from its traditional ideals of law, civil rights, and morality.