Jack Goldsmith

Twenty law students take their seats in a third-floor seminar room of Wasserstein Hall, and their professors get right down to business. How do we evaluate claims made in the literature about the impact of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act on U.S. businesses and U.S. leadership around the world? Instantly, a student ventures that broad anti-corruption efforts might help the U.S. economy, even if the benefits to particular firms are unclear. For the next two hours, the air crackles with refutations, clarifications, elaborations, insights and reality checks. The break that’s scheduled at the one-hour mark comes 15 minutes late because the students are too engaged to stop.

At Harvard Law School on April 5, a panel of four leading legal scholars examined a single question: Is there a lack of intellectual diversity at law schools?

In a Supreme Court case, the International Human Rights Clinic argues that the Alien Tort Statute applies to corporations.

In October 1962, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. spoke at Harvard Law School on “The Future of Integration.” It was six months before he would be imprisoned in a Birmingham jail, 10 months before the March on Washington, almost two years before the signing of the Civil Rights Act and almost six years before his assassination. “It may be that the law cannot make a man love me,” he said, “but it can keep him from lynching me.”

As Barack Obama ’91 was making criticism of Bush administration policies on terrorism a centerpiece of his campaign for the presidency in 2008, Jack Goldsmith offered a prediction: The next president, even if it were Obama, would not undo those policies. One of the key and underappreciated reasons, he wrote in a spring 2008 magazine article, was that “many controversial Bush administration policies have already been revised to satisfy congressional and judicial critics.”

The presidency is more powerful, larger, and has more tools at its disposal than ever before, said Harvard Law School Professor Jack Goldsmith. But, he quickly added, that’s only half the story. The other half of the story—the forces that constrain presidential power—was the main topic during a March19 panel discussion of his new book “Power and Constraint: The Accountability Presidency after 9/11,” hosted by the Harvard Book Store at the Brattle Theatre in Harvard Square.

Harvard Law School Professor Jack Goldsmith appeared on the Mar. 12 edition of NPR’s On Point with Tom Ashbrook alongside ACLU Executive Director Anthony Romero. The two addressed the controversy over Attorney General Eric Holder’s recent remarks at Northwestern University Law School in which he defended the legality of the Obama administration’s use of targeted killings of Americans suspected of terrorism-related activity.

“Politics and Corporate Money” Professor Lucian Bebchuk LL.M. ’80 S.J.D. ’84 Project Syndicate Sept. 20, 2010 “A recent decision issued by the United States Supreme Court expanded the freedom of corporations to spend money on political campaigns and candidates. … This raises well-known questions about democracy and private power, but another important question is often overlooked: who should decide for a publicly traded corporation whether to spend funds on politics, how much, and to what ends?

Harvard Law School Professor Jack Goldsmith was a guest on National Public Radio’s On Point on June 28, discussing presidential war powers and Congressional authority in relation to the United States’ current military action in Libya.

In a recent op-ed in Slate, Professor Jack Goldsmith makes the case for why President Obama's campaign of air and sea strikes against Libya is constitutional.  Goldsmith says that while he agrees with "many of the arguments from critics of the intervention that  President Obama acted imprudently in committing American forces to a conflict with an ill-defined national security justification,"  he does not believe that the military action is unconstitutional. Goldsmith's op-ed, "War Power," appeared in the March 21, 2011 edition of Slate. A former assistant attorney general in the Bush Administration, Goldsmith is the author of "The Terror Presidency: Law and Judgement Inside the Bush Administration" (New York : W.W. Norton & Company 2007).

Harvard Law School Professor Jack Goldsmith co-wrote an op-ed with Benjamin Wittes for the Nov. 19, 2010 edition of The Washington Post titled “Ghailani verdict makes stronger case for military detentions.” The piece addresses debate over the Obama administration’s policy to try former Guantanamo detainees in civilian court.

Harvard Law School Professor Jack Goldsmith wrote an op-ed for the Oct. 21, 2010 edition of the Washington Post titled “Our nation’s secrets, stuck in a broken system.” The piece addresses Bob Woodward’s book, “Obama Wars,” in which ostensibly classified information – presumably obtained from senior White House officials – is disclosed regardless of the “grave damage” that could result from its release.  

In an Oct. 8 op-ed in the New York Times, Harvard Law School Professor Jack Goldsmith argues that the trial of suspected terrorists – whether in criminal, civilian, or military court – is the “wrong approach.” 

Harvard Law School Professor Jack Goldsmith recently spoke on NPR about the potential consequences of the ambiguity surrounding legal and ethical limits of state behavior in cyberspace.

Nine years after Sept. 11 and 20 months into the Obama presidency, our nation is still flummoxed about what to do with captured terrorists, writes HLS Professor Jack Goldsmith in an op-ed in today's Washington Post. In his op-ed, "A way past the terrorist detention gridlock," Goldsmith says that while there is no "silver bullet" for this problem, there are several steps the administration could take toward resolution. 

Harvard Law School Professor Jack Goldsmith recently published an op-ed in the Washington Post on the effects the new Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START) could have on the Senate’s role in foreign policy.

Several HLS Professors testified on behalf of former Dean Elena Kagan ’86 on July 1 during confirmation hearings for her nomination to become an associate justice on the U.S. Supreme Court.

A Measure of History Professor Kenneth W. Mack ’91
The Boston Globe
March 25, 2010 “In recent weeks, the Obama administration … sought to mobilize…

“The cybersecurity changes we need,” an op-ed, co-written by Harvard Law School Professor Jack Goldsmith and Melissa Hathaway of the Harvard Kennedy School,  appeared in the May 29, 2010, edition of the Washington Post.

Harvard Law School Professors Gerald L. Neuman ’80 and Jack Goldsmith are amongst the new class of members elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.