| Description |
305 pages ; 24 cm |
| Contents |
The law of September -- The administration's response -- The real Guantanamo -- The necessity and impossibility of judicial review -- The case for Congress -- The twin problems of detention and trial -- An honest interrogation law -- Surveillance law for a new century |
| Summary |
"Six years after the September 11 attacks, America is losing a crucial front in the ongoing war on terror. It is losing not to Al Qaeda but to its own failure to construct a set of laws that will protect the American people and govern the American side of a conflict unlike any it has faced in the past. Now, in the twilight of President Bush's administration, Brookings Institution fellow Benjamin Wittes offers a vigorous analysis of the troubling legal legacy of the Bush administration as well as that of the U.S. Congress and the Supreme Court." |
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"In a line of argument that is sure to spark controversy, Wittes reveals an administration whose most significant failure was not that it was too aggressive in the substance of its action, but rather that it tried to shoulder the burden of aggressiveness on its own without seeking the support of other branches of government. Using startling new empirical research on the detainee population at Guantanamo Bay, Wittes avers that many of the administration's actions were far more defensible than its critics believed and actually warranted congressional support." "This is the first nonideological argument about a controversial issue of vital importance to all Americans."--BOOK JACKET |
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"Law and the Long War tells as no book has before the story of how America came to its current impasse in the debate over liberty, human rights, and counterterrorism and draws a road map for how the country and the next president might move forward. Going beyond the stale debate between those fixated on the executive branch as the key architect of counterterrorism policy and those who see the judiciary as the essential guarantor of liberty against governmental abuses, Wittes argues that the essential problem is that the Bush administration did not seek - and Congress did not write - new laws to authorize and regulate the tough presidential actions this war would require." |
| Bibliography |
Includes bibliographical references (pages [265]-296) and index |
| Subject |
Terrorism -- United States.
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Terrorism -- Prevention -- Law and legislation -- United States.
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Justice, Administration of -- United States.
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| LC no. |
2008012494 |
| ISBN |
9781594201790 |
|
159420179X |
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