Title: Separation of powers and the national security state
Abstract: Although the constitutional struggles of the Bush administration now seem to be in our proverbial “rearview mirror,” the constitutional questions that these struggles brought to the surface will surely reappear. At the heart of these struggles was a nagging but crucially important question concerning the relative weight and importance that the government had to place on questions of national security. For the Bush administration, the preeminent importance of maintaining national security continually trumped other concerns. And, if we are to be fair, this attitude made some sense for an administration that presided in its first year over an attack that killed so many citizens on domestic soil. As Jack Goldsmith says in his important and thoughtful book on the Bush administration: “It is hard to overstate the impact that the incessant waves of threat reports have on the judgment of people inside the executive branch who are responsible for protecting American lives” (Goldsmith 2007, 72). Although Goldsmith’s account, based in part on his own experience in the administration, ends up being critical, this criticism is mixed with a fair-minded awareness that the threat of another attack may have overwhelmed their better judgment. He claims that the reactions of the administration were “natural responses by an executive branch entirely responsible for protecting the safety of Americans but largely in the dark about where or how the next terrorist attack will occur.” In fact, for Goldsmith, the reaction of the administration was not unique: “Its source lies deeper, and is not unique to this presidency” (Goldsmith 2007, 75).
Publication Year: 2011
Publication Date: 2011-01-01
Language: en
Type: article
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Cited By Count: 1
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