{"id":1105,"date":"2011-12-16T09:20:16","date_gmt":"2011-12-16T14:20:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www3.law.harvard.edu\/journals\/hlpr\/?p=1105"},"modified":"2015-10-02T15:25:45","modified_gmt":"2015-10-02T15:25:45","slug":"congress-and-obama-compromise-on-executive-power-ignore-civil-liberties","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/lpr\/2011\/12\/16\/congress-and-obama-compromise-on-executive-power-ignore-civil-liberties\/","title":{"rendered":"Congress and Obama compromise on executive power, ignore civil liberties"},"content":{"rendered":"

Billy Corriher\u00a0<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n

President Obama will sign into law a defense authorization\u00a0bill<\/a>\u00a0that purports to expand his authority to indefinitely detain persons suspected of terrorism.\u00a0 The President initially threatened to veto the bill over objections to provisions that required military custody of detainees.\u00a0 The Obama administration argued it needed the flexibility to take both a military and a law enforcement approach to fighting terrorism.\u00a0 Republicans\u00a0criticized<\/a>\u00a0the president as lacking a \u201cconsistent\u201d policy on handling suspected terrorists.<\/span><\/p>\n

Congress\u00a0added<\/a>\u00a0waivers and exemptions that assuaged the president\u2019s concerns about flexibility and ensured that Obama\u2019s policy will remain inconsistent.\u00a0 Republicans asserted that military custody would assure a focus on obtaining intelligence, instead of evidence for a criminal trial. Both law enforcement and military officials\u00a0opposed<\/a>\u00a0the bill and echoed support for flexibility.\u00a0 The bill seems to confer authority for endless detention, but the Supreme Court had already\u00a0recognized<\/a>\u00a0a broad detention authority under the 2001\u00a0Authorization<\/a>\u00a0to Use Military Force.<\/p>\n

If it wasn\u2019t about consistency, why is Congress suddenly asserting a stronger role in making decisions about fighting war and trying criminals?\u00a0 Republicans feign concerns that Obama\u2019s policies are making the country less safe.\u00a0 But given the recent string of assassinations of top al Qaeda leaders, there is little reason to doubt Obama\u2019s effectiveness in fighting terrorism.\u00a0 Some in Congress think criminal trials, which might respect a terrorist\u2019s rights, are somehow inherently dangerous.\u00a0 A recent New York Times\u00a0article<\/a>\u00a0said criminal trials result in lower recidivism and lower costs than Guantanamo Bay\u2019s military trials.\u00a0 The article also depicted life in super-max prison for the hundreds of terrorists convicted in Article III courts, most of them prosecuted by the Bush administration.<\/p>\n

In spite of the successes of the law enforcement approach, Congress continue to resist the administration\u2019s efforts to move detainees out of Guantanamo.\u00a0 President Obama, faced with a constant tug of war with Congress, seems to prefer targeted assassination of terrorists to capturing them and figuring out how to try them.\u00a0 Ask Anwar al-Aulaqi\u2019s father about Obama\u2019s \u201csoftness\u201d in fighting terrorism.<\/p>\n

If this dispute between the executive and legislative branches is about politics, then our leaders are no longer taking this war seriously.\u00a0 Republicans might think they can benefit by painting Obama as soft on terrorism.\u00a0 It\u2019s no accident that Senator Mitch \u201cNumber-one-priority-is-making-Obama-a-one-term-President\u201d McConnell uses the\u00a0harshest<\/a>\u00a0rhetoric in criticizing the President\u2019s national security policies.<\/p>\n

If the war on terror winds down, the country may start looking back.\u00a0 As more facts emerge about the early years of the war on terror, some might worry about their culpability.\u00a0 There seems to be a push to legitimize the interrogation practices that clearly amount to torture. Senator Diane Feinstein recently discussed a forthcoming Senate report concluding that \u201ccoercive and abusive treatment of detainees in U.S. custody was far more systematic and widespread than we thought.\u201d<\/p>\n

During the fight over the defense bill, Obama seemed more concerned with preserving executive flexibility than civil liberties.\u00a0 Critics denounced Obama for ignoring civil liberties, but the bill doesn\u2019t seem to change the status quo on detention. The 2002 AUMF declared war on al Qaeda and its allies, and the Supreme Court recognized that the laws of war allow nations to detain combatants during a war.\u00a0 The defense bill broadens the AUMF beyond those responsible for 9\/11 to those who \u201csubstantially support\u201d al Qaeda or \u201cassociated forces,\u201d making this war seem even more endless.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Billy Corriher\u00a0 President Obama will sign into law a defense authorization\u00a0bill\u00a0that purports to expand his authority to indefinitely detain persons […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1105","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/peZQka-hP","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/lpr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1105","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/lpr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/lpr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/lpr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/lpr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1105"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/lpr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1105\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/lpr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1105"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/lpr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1105"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/lpr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1105"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}