Legal Policy in the Obama Administration

Transcript

RUSSELL WHEELER: Now all the transition talk -- or almost all the transition talk since the election a week ago yesterday has been about the fiscal crisis and about foreign affairs -- the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. And you have to look pretty hard to find much information about transition and legal policy or what the Justice Department may look like under the Obama Administration.

Now, obviously, policy groups have offered their own recommendations. The Constitution Project has a string of recommendations in the criminal procedure area, which were available if you wanted to pick them up outside. Just today, we saw that OMB Watch and a coalition of groups issued a paper about secrecy, including recommendations about the Ashcroft memo and the Freedom of Information Act. And also I should say by way of preliminaries, obviously the Justice Department doesn't have sole province over legal policy in the administration, but, by the nature of the Justice Department, its advice giving at its litigation activities, it cuts across the other departments. So you've got a pretty good handle from looking at Justice on the main elements of the legal policy in any administration.

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