Jack Goldsmith

For other people with the surname Goldsmith, see Goldsmith (surname).

Jack Goldsmith
Born	September 1962 (age 61) Memphis, Tennessee
Nationality	United States
Alma mater	Yale Law School Oxford University Washington & Lee University
Occupation(s)	Lawyer, Professor

Jack Landman Goldsmith (born September 26, 1962) is a Harvard Law School professor who has written a number of texts regarding international law, cyber law, and national security law. He has been "widely considered one of the brightest stars in the conservative legal firmament."

From October 2003 to July 2004, he served under Attorney General John Ashcroft and Deputy Attorney General James Comey as an United States Assistant Attorney General for the Office of Legal Counsel in the Department of Justice, and wrote a book about his experiences there called The Terror Presidency.

Education and career

Goldsmith graduated from Washington & Lee University with a B.A. summa cum laude in 1984. He then earned a second B.A. with first class honours, from Oxford University, in 1986, a J.D. from Yale Law School, in 1989, an M.A. from Oxford (which is not a separate degree, but an upgrading of the BA), in 1991, and a diploma from the Hague Academy of International Law in 1992. He clerked for Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson III on the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit from 1989 to 1990, and for Justice Anthony Kennedy of the Supreme Court of the United States from 1990 to 1991. Before joining the Harvard Law faculty, he was a professor at the University of Chicago Law School and the University of Virginia Law School.

Office of Legal Counsel

In October 2003, Goldsmith was selected to head the Office of Legal Counsel, which provides legal guidance to the president and all executive branch agencies, including those tasked with the interrogation of enemy combatants. This placed him in a position to influence debates within the Bush administration regarding the conduct of the War on Terror, where he was successful in moderating some of what he considered to be the "constitutional excesses" embraced by the White House. Goldsmith resigned from the OLC 30 June 2004.

During his tenure at OLC Goldsmith withdrew as legally defective what have been called variously the Bybee Memo or the Torture Memos, OLC legal justifications for tormenting detainees regarded by the CIA as a "golden shield" against prosecuting officials involved. He was unable to complete replacement opinions however, before his resignation. In Goldsmith's book, The Terror Presidency, he claims he resigned largely because he felt he had lost the confidence of administration leaders. He does not specify who those leaders were, but notes that White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales asked him to remain while David Addington, then the legal counsel to the Vice-President and an influential White House figure, sardonically asked which other OLC opinions he intended to overturn. The book observes: "Nobody had said no to them before."

According to Goldsmith, one consequence of OLC's "power to interpret the law is the power to bestow on government officials what is effectively an advance pardon for actions taken at the edges of vague criminal statutes."

The Terror Presidency

Goldsmith is the author of The Terror Presidency, a book that details his tenure at OLC and reaction to legal opinions the Bush administration promulgated in the war on terror, including the definition of torture, the applicability of the Geneva Conventions to the war on terror and the Iraq War, the detention and trial of suspected terrorists at Guantanamo Bay and elsewhere, and wiretapping laws. Though he is largely sympathetic with the concerns of the Bush administration's terrorism policies, his primary claim is that fear of another attack drove the administration' policy, and that its focus on the hard power of prerogative rather than the soft power of persuasion had been counterproductive, both in the war on terror and in the extension of effective executive authority. Some of the assertions made in the book include that the Chief of Staff to Vice President Dick Cheney, David Addington, at one point said that "we’re one bomb away from getting rid of that obnoxious court," referring to the secret FISA court that rules on warrants for secret wiretapping by the United States government.

Goldsmith appeared on Bill Moyers' show on September 7, 2007 to discuss his work, and his time in Attorney General John Ashcroft's hospital room when Alberto Gonzales and White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card attempted to persuade Ashcroft to change his mind about the Bush administration's warrantless wiretap program. He reported that Mrs. Ashcroft stuck her tongue out at Gonzales and Card as they left the room.

Goldsmith has clarified his opinions more recently on NOW on PBS, going so far as to respond to the question "What's the downside of regular courts" a statement culminating in "Another reason you might not want to use the trial system is that the trial system, to be legitimate, has to have the possibility of acquitting someone of a crime" in reference to attempts to allow military trials of American Citizens while withholding government evidence.

Books authored

• The Terror Presidency. W. W. Norton & Company. 2007. ISBN 978-0-393-06550-3. {{cite book}}: Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help)

• Who Controls the Internet? Illusions of a Borderless World (with Tim Wu, 2006) ISBN 0-19-515266-2

See also

• List of law clerks of the Supreme Court of the United States

External links

• Why the U.S. shouldn't try Julian Assange, Washington Post op-ed by Goldsmith