RESEARCH AND COMMENTARY
Benjamin Wittes and Jack Goldsmith, June 29, 2009, The Washington Post
President Obama seems poised to adopt the Bush administration's unilateral approach to detention. This approach has failed President Bush and it will not serve President Obama any better, writes Benjamin Wittes and Jack Goldsmith. The president can still get what he needs on detention if he works from Congress's bipartisan center, releases more substantial information about the detainees he thinks cannot be set free, and speaks often about the need for stable rules to govern non-criminal detentions that America cannot forswear. Read More
RESEARCH AND COMMENTARY
Benjamin Wittes and Colleen A. Peppard, June 26, 2009, The Brookings Institution
Closing the detention camp at Guantánamo Bay by President Obama's January deadline is pressuring the administration to craft a new system for incarcerating terrorist suspects, possibly through an executive order. Benjamin Wittes and Colleen Peppard suggest instead a model law for terrorist incapacitation. Read More
RESEARCH AND COMMENTARY
William A. Galston, May 28, 2009, The Brookings Institution
In nominating Sonia Sotomayor, the Obama administration must be more than satisfied with the early reaction from a political standpoint, writes William Galston. While Democrats are united and Hispanics are thrilled, those who oppose her must choose their words and tactics carefully so as not to antagonize further the nation’s fastest-growing demographic group. Read More
RESEARCH AND COMMENTARY
Benjamin Wittes, May 27, 2009, The Washington Post
Only a few years ago, a Supreme Court nominee like Judge Sonia Sotomayor could expect quick, nearly unanimous confirmation. Yet recent trends in Supreme Court nominations show Sotomayor can expect a highly contentious confirmation. Brookings expert Ben Wittes writes, our system has gone from one in which people like Sotomayor, Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Samuel Alito are shoe-ins for confirmation to a system in which they are shoo-ins for confirmation confrontations. Read More
RESEARCH AND COMMENTARY
Benjamin Wittes, May 21, 2009, The New York Times
Last week, President Obama outlined his approach to closing the Guantánamo Bay detention center on the heels of Congress voting overwhelmingly to block the $80 million he requested to close the the prison. The speech was forward-looking, writes Brookings expert Ben Wittes, in that he maintained the need for a preventative detention system created by Congress and overseen by the courts. Read More
RESEARCH AND COMMENTARY
Darrell M. West, May 20, 2009, The Huffington Post
Armed with $19 billion dollars from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, the Obama administration hopes to employ health information technology to improve medical treatment, cut costs by reducing errors and redundancies, and empower patients by giving them control over their own medical records. Not an easy task, warns Brookings expert Darrell West, since the federal government will need to address the financial, organization, and technological barriers limiting the utilization of health IT in the US. Read More
RESEARCH AND COMMENTARY
Kenneth Anderson, May 11, 2009, The Brookings Institution, Georgetown University Law Center and the Hoover Institution
American domestic law has long accepted the use of targeted killings as self-defense toward ends of vital national security that do not necessarily fall within the strict terms of armed conflict. However, the legal space for it and the legal rationales on which it has been traditionally justified are in danger of shrinking, writes Kenneth Anderson. Read More
RESEARCH AND COMMENTARY
Stuart Taylor, Jr. and Benjamin Wittes, May 10, 2009, The Brookings Institution, Georgetown University Law Center and the Hoover Institution
Benjamin Wittes and Stuart Taylor examine how to amend American interrogation laws to balance the need to avoid the past administration's excesses against the need to get intelligence from captured terrorists. They review the post-September 11 evolution of Bush administration policies on interrogation, the experiences of the CIA and the military and the lessons to be learned from those experiences. Read More
RESEARCH AND COMMENTARY
Wells C. Bennett and Robert S. Litt, May 08, 2009, The Brookings Institution, Georgetown University Law Center and the Hoover Institution
More than seven years after 9/11, the government’s legal, practical and moral authority to detain suspected terrorists without trial remains a subject of fierce debate. Robert Litt and Wells Bennett say Congress could significantly ameliorate the problem by authorizing the creation of a National Security Bar, a permanent corps of security-cleared lawyers who could represent defendants in terrorism-related cases. Read More
VIDEO
Stephen Hess, April 27, 2009
Brookings presidential scholar Stephen Hess discusses the relevance of the 100-day benchmark moment to gauging a president's ability to fit the shoes and the office of his many notable predecessors. The comparisons, he notes, are not easy to make.
RESEARCH AND COMMENTARY
Thomas E. Mann, April 21, 2009, The Brookings Institution
Since taking the oath of office, President Barack Obama has faced a daunting set of immediate policy challenges and has had high expectations for significant changes in politics and policymaking. Nearing President Obama's first hundred days in office, Thomas Mann assesses his achievements and setbacks in a lecture given to the University of Melbourne Law School. Read More
RESEARCH AND COMMENTARY
William A. Galston, April 19, 2009, The Sunday Times
Although many commentators believe that President Obama will be forced, or at least well advised, to focus his agenda on the economy, President Obama has wagered his presidency on the proposition that the U.S. budget and political system can simultaneously absorb an economic stimulus, bail-outs of financial institutions, the housing sector and the automobile industry, and a social-democratic programme not seen since the days of Lyndon B. Johnson writes William Galston. Read More
RESEARCH AND COMMENTARY
William A. Galston, April 14, 2009, The New Republic
Of all the major items on President Obama's agenda, health reform has the best chance of passage during the current Congress, writes William Galston. Yet, the strategic question before Congress is whether health reform will proceed on a bipartisan or Democrats-only basis. Read More
RESEARCH AND COMMENTARY
William A. Galston, March 26, 2009, The Brookings Institution
The Congressional Budget Office’s analysis of President Obama’s budget proposal projects a deficit of $9.3 trillion over the next decade, thereby forcing congressional leaders to look for changes to reduce it. Although the Senate Budget Committee has not yet finished marking up its version of the fiscal year 2010 budget resolution, Democrats are likely to diverge from the president’s desires. While Congress supports most of the president’s priorities, they are poised to sideline many of the programs President Obama proposed to implement, writes William Galston. Read More
RESEARCH AND COMMENTARY
William A. Galston, March 23, 2009, The New Republic
A strong cap-and-trade program seems unlikely to pass given the economic downturn, writes William Galston. Since a majority of Americans say economic growth should be given the priority and Midwestern states depend more heavily on coal-fired power plants, President Obama’s options for cap-and-trade legislation are limited. Read More