Checks and Balances Working Well
In a recent ABC News/Washington Post poll, seventy percent of respondents (including a majority of self-identified liberal Democrats) said they approve of keeping open the Guantanamo Bay detention facility, and 83 percent (including 77 percent of liberal Democrats) said they approve of Obama’s use of armed drone aircraft against terror suspects overseas. Glenn Greenwald described these numbers as “repulsive progressive hypocrisy</
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In a recent ABC News/Washington Post poll, seventy percent of respondents (including a majority of self-identified liberal Democrats) said they approve of keeping open the Guantanamo Bay detention facility, and 83 percent (including 77 percent of liberal Democrats) said they approve of Obama’s use of armed drone aircraft against terror suspects overseas. Glenn Greenwald described these numbers as “repulsive progressive hypocrisy.” I think there is a better explanation: our constitutional system of checks and balances has worked well to achieve a national consensus in support of a much-changed but now undoubtedly lawful and legitimate system of detention at Guantanamo Bay. These checks and balances have also worked to produce a national consensus in support of military commissions, warrantless surveillance, and drone strikes, among other things. I explain my reasoning in this Washington Post op-ed. This basic argument is one of several themes in my new book, which will be published on March 12.
Jack Goldsmith is the Learned Hand Professor at Harvard Law School, co-founder of Lawfare, and a Non-Resident Senior Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. Before coming to Harvard, Professor Goldsmith served as Assistant Attorney General, Office of Legal Counsel from 2003-2004, and Special Counsel to the Department of Defense from 2002-2003.
