When Governments Break the Law

Austin Sarat (Editor) Austin Sarat is William Nelson Cromwell Professor of Jurisprudence and Political Science at Amherst College in Amherst, Massachusetts. He has written or edited dozens of books, including Lethal Injection and the False Promise of Humane Execution, Law's Infamy: Understanding the Canon of Bad Law, and Cause Lawyering: Political Commitments and Professional Responsibilities and Cause Lawyering and the State in a Global Era, which won the 2004 Reginald Heber Smith Book Award.Nasser Hussain (Editor) Nasser Hussain is Associate Professor in the Department of Law, Jurisprudence and Social Thought at Amherst College. He is the author of The Jurisprudence of Emergency: Colonialism and the Rule of Law.

If, as all the authors in this volume concede, Bush Administration violations can be prosecuted for their alleged crimes, shouldnt we, in accordance with the rule of law, proceed with such prosecutions. This, however, is just the jumping off point. This is a great book precisely because the authors clearly succeed in demonstrating the complexity and problems with each seemingly simple solution. Neither solution, prosecuting or not prosecuting, will leave the reader completely satisfied, but this is exactly the point... Using law to legalize something which cannot be legalized raises the question of what, exactly, is the role that law plays in its own subversion. The essays in this volume take a meaningful and helpful step in the direction of answering this question. (Concurring Opinions) While we think of the crimes of the Bush-Cheney administration as lying somewhere in the past, the aggressive wars, warrantless spying, lawless imprisonment, and torture continue. This collection looks deeply into one likely way to end these crimes, namely enforcing the laws against them. Included are serious and informed voices both for and against prosecution. - David Swanson,author of Daybreak: Undoing the Imperial Presidency and Forming a More Perfect Union

• Acknowledgments Introduction: Responding to Government Lawlessness: What Does the Rule of Law Require? Nasser Hussain and Austin Sarat 1 Vindicating the Rule of Law: Prosecuting Free Riders on Human Rights Claire Finkelstein 2 Guantanamo in the Province of The Hague? Daniel Herwitz 3 Universal Jurisdiction as Praxis: An Option to PursueLegal Accountability for Superpower Torturers Lisa Hajjar 4 The Spider's Web: How Government Lawbreakers Routinely Elude the Law Stephen Holmes 5 Democracy as the Rule of Law Paul Horwitz 6 Justice Jackson, the Memory of Internment, and the Rule of Law after the Bush Administration Stephen I. Vladeck About the Contributors Index