The National Security Lawyer, in Crisis: When the 'Best View' of the Law May Not Be the Best View

The Law: “Beyond the Torture Memos: How the Office of Legal Counsel Matters for Executive Branch Scholarship”

“…While the public was coming to terms with the "unfamiliar acronym" (Wozencraft 1971) for the first time, a niche group of lawyers had been grappling with the normative implications of OLC's peculiar role and quiet power for at least a decade (see, e.g., Alito 1993;Kmiec 1993;Koh 1993;Lund 1993;McGinnis 1993;Moss 2000). After the release of the Torture Memos, these normative questions about OLC and lawyers' professional responsibility were taken up with urgency (e.g., Bauer 2018;Johnsen 2007;Pillard 2006;Spitzer 2008;Wendel 2005). A decade and a half later, legal scholars have continued to feature OLC in their analyses of whether and how the law can and should meaningfully constrain the president.…”