Author Archive | Jonathan H. Adler

Judge Evan Wallach — former JAG, renowned expert on the law of war, and designer of this web site on the subject — provides a history lesson on the U.S. government’s treatment of waterboarding in today’s Washington Post: The United States knows quite a bit about waterboarding. The U.S. government — whether acting alone before […]

Bob Bauer comments on the short-lived Colbert campaign for President at More Soft Money Hard Law. His post begins: So the South Carolina Democratic party has concluded that Stephen Colbert may not appear on the Democratic primary ballot. It did not think his candidacy was a laughing matter, and it thought this precisely because the […]

President Bush vetoed the pork-laden $23.2 billion water project bill yesterday. The bill was the product of compromise between the House and Senate. According to the WSJ, the House passed a $14 billion bill, and the Senate passed a $15 billion bill. Each house sought to preserve its own earmarks, so at conference they compromised, […]

Acting assistant attorney general Dan Levin apparently asked to be waterboarded when evaluating its legality, according to ABC News. After the experience, Levin told White House officials that even though he knew he wouldn’t die, he found the experience terrifying and thought that it clearly simulated drowning. Levin, who refused to comment for this story, […]

From the Washington Post: The Transportation Security Administration promotes its programs to ensure security by using undercover operatives to test its airport screeners. In one instance, however, the agency thwarted such a test by alerting screeners across the country that it was under way, even providing descriptions of the undercover agents. The government routinely runs […]

Over at NRO, Ed Whelan responds to the Miles/Sunstein response to his critique.

Whether or not the Bush Administration is making bad arguments in defense of Judge Mukasey’s nomination, it now looks likely he will be confirmed as the next U.S. Attorney General. The Washington Post is reporting that Senators Charles Schumer and Dianne Feinstein will vote in favor of his confirmation.

Georgetown law professor Neil Katyal has an extensive review of Jack Goldsmith’s The Terror Presidency: Law and Judgment Inside the Bush Administration in The New Republic. It should be available to non-subscribers who register, and it is worth a read. The review begins: Jack Goldsmith’s book is quite possibly the first sober account of the […]

University of Chicago law professors Thomas Miles and Cass Sunstein further explain their analysis of judicial “activism” on the Supreme Court, and respond to criticisms, at the University of Chicago Faculty Blog. The critics contend, rightly, that we do not look at the high-profile constitutional cases. But the number of such cases is small, and […]

Brink Lindsey laments Paul Krugman’s “crude partisanship.” How can someone as intelligent and informed as Krugman concoct an interpretation of the post-World War II era that does such violence to the facts? How can someone so familiar with the intricate complexities of social processes convince himself that history is a simple matter of good guys […]

The existing sugar subsidy program costs American consumers an estimated $1.5 billion per year. Congress is revising the sugar subsidy program this year. That would be good news, except it’s making it even worse.

As part of the Federalist Society’s “Originally Speaking” on-line debate series, I participated in a debate on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit’s decision in Abigail Alliance v. Eschenbach. A divided three judge panel initially held that terminally ill patients have a fundamental right under the Due Process Clause to access potentially […]

The Daily Mail reports: Record numbers of Britons are travelling abroad for medical treatment to escape the NHS – with 70,000 patients expected to fly out this year. And by the end of the decade 200,000 “health tourists” will fly as far as Malaysa and South Africa for major surgery to avoid long waiting lists […]

While I agree with Ilya that Gonzales v. Raich re-expanded the scope of the federal Commerce Clause power (as I argued here), I do not believe that it “gives Congress ample power to regulate or ban abortion in pretty much any way it sees fit.” Specifically, I believe that some potentially meaningful limitations on Congress’ […]

George Will has an interesting column arguing that a Presidential candidate’s position on abortion should be irrelevant to many voters, particularly those who support abortion rights and live in states where the majority shares that view. Many, perhaps most, Americans, foggy about the workings of their government, think that overturning Roe would make abortion, one […]