An authoritative assessment of the new laws of war and a sensible and sophisticated roadmap for the future of liberty in the Age of Terror America is losing a crucial front in the ongoing war on terror. It is losing not to Al Qaeda, but to its own failure to construct a set of laws that will protect the American people during this global conflict. As debate continues to rage over the legality and ethics of war, Benjamin Wittes enters the fray with a sober-minded exploration of law in wartime that is definitive, accessible, and nonpartisan. Outlining how this country came to its current impasse over human rights and counterterrorism, Law and the Long War paves the way toward fairer, more accountable rules for a conflict without end.

Law and the Long War: The Future of Justice in the Age of Terror

History

Wittes, Benjamin

Americas

Penguin Publishing Group

How is Kenneth Starr's extraordinary term as independent counsel to be understood? Was he a partisan warrior out to get the Clintons or a savior of the Republic? An unstoppable menace, an unethical lawyer, or a sex-obsessed Puritan striving to enforce a right-wing social morality? This book is the first serious, impartial effort to evaluate and critique Starr's tenure as independent counsel. Relying on lengthy, revealing interviews with Starr and many other players in Clinton-era Washington, Washington Post journalist Benjamin Wittes arrives at a new understanding of Starr and the part he played in one of American history's most enthralling public sagas.

Starr: A Reassessment

Yale University Press

"Unmaking the Presidency, devastating in its understatedness, may prove to be the most important book about the Trump presidency." ―Tabatha Southey, Maclean's The definitive account of how Donald Trump has wielded the powers of the American presidency The extraordinary authority of the U.S. presidency has no parallel in the democratic world. Today that authority resides in the hands of one man, Donald J. Trump. But rarely if ever has the nature of a president clashed more profoundly with the nature of the office. Unmaking the Presidency tells the story of the confrontation between a person and the institution he almost wholly embodies.
From the moment of his inauguration, Trump has challenged our deepest expectations of the presidency. But what are those expectations, where did they come from, and how great is the damage? As editors of the “invaluable” (The New York Times) Lawfare website, Susan Hennessey and Benjamin Wittes have attracted a large audience to their hard-hitting and highly informed commentary on the controversies surrounding the Trump administration. In this book, they situate Trump-era scandals and outrages in the deeper context of the presidency itself. How should we understand the oath of office when it is taken by a man who may not know what it means to preserve, protect, and defend something other than himself? What aspects of Trump are radically different from past presidents and what aspects have historical antecedents? When has he simply built on his predecessors’ misdeeds, and when has he invented categories of misrule entirely his own? 
By setting Trump in the light of history, Hennessey and Wittes provide a crucial and durable account of a presidency like no other.

Unmaking the Presidency: Donald Trump's War on the World's Most Powerful Office

Hennessey, Susan

Farrar. Straus and Giroux

Confirmation Wars: Preserving Independent Courts in Angry Times (Hoover Studies in Politics, Economics, and Society)

In Confirmation Wars, Benjamin Wittes rejects the parodies offered by both the Right and Left of the decline of the process by which the United States Senate confirms―or rejects―the president's nominees to the federal judiciary. He draws on original reporting and new historical research to provide a more accurate understanding of the current climate. He argues that the transformations the process has undergone should not be understood principally in partisan terms but as an institutional response on the part of the legislative branch to the growth of judicial power in the past five decades. While some change may have been inevitable, the increasing aggressiveness of the Senate's conception of its function poses significant challenges for maintaining independent courts over the long term. The problem, Wittes argues, lies both in the extortionate quality of modern confirmations, in which senators make their votes contingent on reassurance by the nominees about substantive areas of concern, and in the possibility that the breakdown of the confirmation process represents a far larger effort by the Senate to rein in judicial power. Wittes offers several strategies for managing the political conflict surrounding nominations, strategies that seek to protect the independence of the courts and the prerogative of the president to choose judges while maximizing the utility to democratic government of a Senate that takes its advice and consent role seriously. Most importantly, Wittes argues for ending the relatively new practice of having nominees testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee. Published in cooperation with the Hoover Institution.

Rules & Procedures

Rowman & Littlefield Publishers

In Confirmation Wars, Benjamin Wittes rejects the parodies offered by both the Right and Left of the decline of the process by which the United States Senate confirms_or rejects_the presidentOs nominees to the federal judiciary. He draws on original reporting and new historical research to provide a more accurate understanding of the current climate. He argues that the transformations the process has undergone should not be understood principally in partisan terms but as an institutional response on the part of the legislative branch to the growth of judicial power in the past five decades. While some change may have been inevitable, the increasing aggressiveness of the SenateOs conception of its function poses significant challenges for maintaining independent courts over the long term. The problem, Wittes argues, lies both in the extortionate quality of modern confirmations, in which senators make their votes contingent on reassurance by the nominees about substantive areas of concern, and in the possibility that the breakdown of the confirmation process represents a far larger effort by the Senate to rein in judicial power. Wittes offers several strategies for managing the political conflict surrounding nominations, strategies that seek to protect the independence of the courts and the prerogative of the president to choose judges while maximizing the utility to democratic government of a Senate that takes its advice and consent role seriously. Most importantly, Wittes argues for ending the relatively new practice of having nominees testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee. Published in cooperation with the Hoover Institution.

Legal Theory & Systems

"Our current stalemate over detention serves nobody—not the military or any other component of the U.S. government that has to operate overseas.... It is a system that no rational combination of values or strategic considerations would have produced; it could have emerged only as a consequence of a clash of interests that produced a clear victory for nobody."—from the Introduction
Benjamin Wittes issues a persuasive call for greater coherence, clarity, and public candor from the American government regarding its detention policy and practices, and greater citizen awareness of the same. In Detention and Denial, he illustrates how U.S. detention policy is a tangle of obfuscation rather than a serious set of moral and legal decisions. Far from sharpening focus and defining clear parameters for action, it sends mixed signals, muddies the legal and military waters, and produces perverse incentives. Its random operation makes a mockery of the human rights concerns that prompted the limited amount of legal scrutiny that detention has received to date. The government may actually be painting itself into a corner, leaving itself unable to explain or justify actions it may need to take in the future. The situation is unsustainable and must be addressed.
Preventive detention is a touchy subject, an easy target for eager-to-please candidates and indignant media, so public officials remain largely mum on the issue. Many Americans would be surprised to learn that no broad principle in American jurisprudence actually prohibits preventive detention; rather, the law "eschews it except when legislatures and courts deem it necessary to prevent grave public harm." But the habeas corpus legal cases that have come out of the Guantánamo Bay detentionfacility—which remains open, despite popular expectations to the contrary—have addressed only a small slice of the overall issue and have not—and will not—produce a coherent body of policy. 
U.S. government and security forces need clear and consistent application of their detention policies, and Americans must be better informed about them. To that end, Wittes critiques America's current muddled detention policies and sets forth a detention policy based on candor. It would set clear rules and distinguish several types of detention, based on characteristics of the detainees themselves rather than where they were captured. Congress would follow steps to "devise a coherent policy to regulate the U.S. system of detention, a system that the country cannot avoid developing."

Detention and Denial: The Case for Candor after Guantánamo

Politics & Social Sciences

Social Sciences

Brookings Institution Press

"Our current stalemate over detention serves nobody―not the military or any other component of the U.S. government that has to operate overseas.... It is a system that no rational combination of values or strategic considerations would have produced; it could have emerged only as a consequence of a clash of interests that produced a clear victory for nobody."―from the IntroductionBenjamin Wittes issues a persuasive call for greater coherence, clarity, and public candor from the American government regarding its detention policy and practices, and greater citizen awareness of the same. In  Detention and Denial, he illustrates how U.S. detention policy is a tangle of obfuscation rather than a serious set of moral and legal decisions. Far from sharpening focus and defining clear parameters for action, it sends mixed signals, muddies the legal and military waters, and produces perverse incentives. Its random operation makes a mockery of the human rights concerns that prompted the limited amount of legal scrutiny that detention has received to date. The government may actually be painting itself into a corner, leaving itself unable to explain or justify actions it may need to take in the future. The situation is unsustainable and must be addressed.Preventive detention is a touchy subject, an easy target for eager-to-please candidates and indignant media, so public officials remain largely mum on the issue. Many Americans would be surprised to learn that no broad principle in American jurisprudence actually prohibits preventive detention; rather, the law "eschews it except when legislatures and courts deem it necessary to prevent grave public harm." But the habeas corpus legal cases that have come out of the Guantánamo Bay detentionfacility―which remains open, despite popular expectations to the contrary―have addressed only a small slice of the overall issue and have not―and will not―produce a coherent body of policy. U.S. government and security forces need clear and consistent application of their detention policies, and Americans must be better informed about them. To that end, Wittes critiques America's current muddled detention policies and sets forth a detention policy based on candor. It would set clear rules and distinguish several types of detention, based on characteristics of the detainees themselves rather than where they were captured. Congress would follow steps to "devise a coherent policy to regulate the U.S. system of detention, a system that the country cannot avoid developing."

When Barack Obama came into office, the strategic landscape facing the United States in its overseas counterterrorism operations was undergoing a shift. Even before the rise of drones necessitated the articulation of legal doctrine, the Obama administration had to explain itself. In Speaking the Law, the authors offer a detailed examination of the speeches of the Obama administration on national security legal issues. Viewed together here for the first time, the authors lay out a broad array of legal and policy positions regarding a large number of principles currently contested at both the domestic and international levels. The book describes what the Obama administration has said about the legal framework in which it is operating with respect to such questions as the nature of the war on terrorism, the use of drones and targeted killings, detention, trial by military commission and in federal courts, and interrogation. The authors analyze this framework, examining the stresses on it and asking where the administration got matters right and where they were wrong. They conclude with suggestions for certain reforms to the framework for the administration and Congress to consider.

Speaking the Law: The Obama Administration's Addresses on National Security Law (Hoover Institution Press Publication)

Anderson, Kenneth

Constitutional Law

Hoover Institution Press

Just in time for the first Supreme Court confirmation of the Obama administration, one of America's most insightful legal commentators updates the critically acclaimed Confirmation Wars: Preserving Independent Courts in Angry Times to place the nomination of Judge Sonia Sotomayor in the context of the changing nature of judicial nominations by recent presidents. Our system has gone from one in which people like Sotomayor or recent highly qualified nominees like John Roberts and Samuel Alito are shoe-ins for confirmation to a system in which they are shoe-ins for confirmation confrontations. While rejecting parodies offered by both the Right and Left of the decline of the process by which the United States Senate confirms? or rejects? the president's nominees to the federal judiciary, Wittes explains why and how this change took place. He argues that the trade has been a bad one? offering only the crudest check on executive appointments to the judiciary and putting nominees in the most untenable and unfair situations. Published in cooperation with the Hoover Institution

From drone warfare in the Middle East to digital spying, governments have now harnessed the power of cutting-edge technology to awesome effect. But what happens when ordinary people have the same tools at their fingertips? Advances in cybertechnology, biotechnology and robotics mean that more people than ever before have access to potentially dangerous technologies – from drones to computer networks and biological agents – which could be used to attack states and private citizens alike. The authors detail the myriad possibilities and enormous risks present in the modern world and argue that if our national governments can no longer adequately protect us from harm, they will lose their legitimacy. In this brave new world where many little brothers are as menacing as any Big Brother, safeguarding our liberty and privacy may require strong domestic and international surveillance and new laws. Maintaining security in this world where anyone can attack anyone requires a global perspective, with more multinational forces to protect (and protect against) weaker states who do not yet have the capability to police their own people. The Future of Violence is at once an introduction to our emerging world and an authoritative blueprint for how government must adapt in order to survive and protect us.

The Future of Violence - Robots and Germs, Hackers and Drones: Confronting the New Age of Threat

Blum, Gabriella

Military

Amberley

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Wittes, Benjamin. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Wittes, Benjamin

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Wittes, Benjamin. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Law and the Long War: The Future of Justice in the Age of Terror

Starr: A Reassessment

Unmaking the Presidency: Donald Trump's War on the World's Most Powerful Office

Confirmation Wars: Preserving Independent Courts in Angry Times (Hoover Studies in Politics, Economics, and Society)

Confirmation Wars: Preserving Independent Courts in Angry Times (Hoover Studies in Politics, Economics, and Society)

Detention and Denial: The Case for Candor after Guantánamo

Detention and Denial: The Case for Candor after Guantánamo

Speaking the Law: The Obama Administration's Addresses on National Security Law (Hoover Institution Press Publication)

Confirmation Wars: Preserving Independent Courts in Angry Times (Hoover Studies in Politics, Economics, and Society)

The Future of Violence - Robots and Germs, Hackers and Drones: Confronting the New Age of Threat