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Stuart Taylor, Jr.

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The Hawks Are Scary, the Doves More Dangerous

by Stuart Taylor, Jr.

National Journal

The Bush administration’s hard-line hawks, led by Vice President Cheney, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, and their top aides, exude an imperial bellicosity and a hubristic disdain for international law and opinion that could end up undermining our national security. The risk is that they will commit us to a succession of go-it-alone wars-not only in Iraq but also in Iran, North Korea, perhaps Libya, possibly Pakistan (if militant Islamists take power) and elsewhere-that would destroy our relations with Europe, isolate us even from Britain, inflame the Islamic world, and spawn legions of new terrorists.

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Greedy Lawyers Cheat Real Asbestos Victims

by Stuart Taylor, Jr.

National Journal

Two recent developments dramatize how lawyer-plutocrats continue to obscenely enrich themselves by using massive asbestos lawsuits and a disgracefully dysfunctional litigation system to extort billions of dollars from American consumers every year. The lawyers blackmail mostly blameless companies, while cheating the real victims of asbestos.

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When Affirmative Action Is Nothing But Discrimination

by Stuart Taylor, Jr.

National Journal

Dennis Worth had been working happily and winning high performance evaluations for 16 years in the Department of Housing and Urban Development’s St. Louis office when things started going sour. In 1994, he was turned down for two promotions for which an independent merit-staffing panel had rated him "highly qualified." By 1995, it "kind of hit me," Worth recalls, "that minorities and women were being promoted and advanced, and white males were not."

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But Did They Break The Law?

by Stuart Taylor, Jr.

Newsweek

Yes, some of them have told the FBI that they were there. But at least one says he went only to see what the camp was about–and tried to leave as fast as he could. So how much of a case do prosecutors really have against the six Buffalo-area men arrested for allegedly receiving training at an Al Qaeda camp in Afghanistan?The biggest legal hurdle facing the authorities–who believe that the young men were part of a Qaeda sleeper cell in Lackawanna, N.Y.–is a two-year-old ruling that a critica

Yes, some of them have told the FBI that they were there. But at least one says he went only to see what the camp was about–and tried to leave as fast as he could. So how much of a case do prosecutors really have against the six Buffalo-area men arrested for allegedly receiving training at an Al Qaeda camp in Afghanistan?

The biggest legal hurdle facing the authorities–who believe that the young men were part of a Qaeda sleeper cell in Lackawanna, N.Y.–is a two-year-old ruling that a critical part of the 1996 antiterrorism law under which they have been charged is unconstitutionally vague. That was the view of a federal appeals court in an unrelated California case.

Another likely defense: a freedom-of-association claim echoing those raised by communist defendants back in the 1950s. The issue then was whether people could be prosecuted for being members of–or associating with–the U.S. Communist Party without proof of specific intent to further its illegal goal of violent revolution. The issue now is whether people can be prosecuted for providing "material support" to a foreign terrorist group without proof of specific intent to further its illegal terrorist activities.

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Invading Iraq Wouldn’t Necessarily Make Us Safer

by Stuart Taylor, Jr.

National Journal

I do not know what we should do about Iraq. But to reach the right answer, we should focus on the right question: What approach seems the best bet to reduce the very large risk that a thermonuclear explosion-whether engineered by Iraq, Al Qaeda, or someone else-will obliterate Washington, New York, or another American city (or cities) at some point during the next two or three decades?

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NewsHour: Liberty vs.Security – September 10, 2002

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JIM LEHRER: Margaret Warner talked with Deputy Attorney General Larry Thompson last week, beginning with why so much of the legal proceedings have been conducted in secret.

LARRY THOMPSON: Nothing that we have been done has been enacted in secrecy. Every measure that we have undertaken is out in the open. Every measure that we have undertaken has had the sunlight of public attention. And almost all measures are not done unilaterally by members of the Department of Justice. These measures are subject to judicial review by judges and other judicial officers.

MARGARET WARNER: But let me just ask you for instance, the chief immigration judge, who just explained to our viewers also is part of the Department of Justice, Michael Creppi, issued an order saying, and I’ll just read it to you, that these hearings, these deportation hearings, were to be held in secret, "no visitors, no family, no press, not even confirming whether it’s on the docket."

LARRY THOMPSON: The only thing that has been secret, if you will, has been the list of the individuals and the actual hearing itself. But the fact that an individual was taken into custody, the fact that he or she was in a particular detention facility, that was open to the public, if you will, to their friends, to their relatives, they could make phone calls.

This was not done in the dark of night. People do not disappear in this country and we have really not done anything in secret, if you will. The actual administration of justice with respect to some of these cases was done, what we call in camera, because of national security and other concerns, and even that has been subject to judicial review, but nothing has been done in secret.

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Legal Affairs – Detain ‘Enemy Combatants’ – But Give Them Hearings

by Stuart Taylor, Jr.

National Journal

The biggest civil-liberties issue that the nation has confronted since September 11-indeed, the biggest in many years-is getting only a fraction of the attention it deserves. One reason is confusion over exactly what is at stake. The real issue is not whether the government can detain "enemy combatants" in military brigs without criminal charges. It can. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit so stated in a July 12 preliminary ruling. Based on World War II precedents, it seems almost certain that the Supreme Court will agree.

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You Do Not Have a Right to Remain Silent

by Stuart Taylor, Jr.

National Journal

Last September 11, after the 19 hijackers had completed their ghastly work, the government had in its custody a man suspected by FBI agents of being part of the plot-a man they thought might have information about other co-conspirators or planned attacks. He had been locked up since mid-August, technically for overstaying his visa, based on a tip about his strange behavior at a Minnesota flight school. Even before September 11, agents had strongly suspected that he was a dangerous Islamic militant plotting airline terrorism.

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Let’s Not Allow a Fiat to Undermine the Bill of Rights

by Stuart Taylor, Jr.

National Journal

To understand the Bush administration’s preference for military detention over criminal prosecution-and the dangers of its approach-compare the case of American Taliban John Walker Lindh with those of Jose Padilla, the suspected dirty-bomb-plotter who was arrested after flying into Chicago; and Yasser Esam Hamdi, the Louisiana-born Saudi Arabian captured in Afghanistan.