Table of Contents

Law And The Long WarIntroduction

One: The Law of September 10
Two: The Administration's Response
Three: The Real Guantanamo
Four: The Necessity and Impossibility of Judicial Review
Five: The Case for Congress
Six: The Twin Problems of Detention and Trial
Seven: An Honest Interrogation Law
Eight: Surveillance Law for a New Century

Conclusion
Acknowledgments
Notes
Index

About the Author

Benjamin Wittes is a Fellow and Research Director in Public Law at the Brookings Institution. A former editorial writer for The Washington Post specializing in legal affairs, Wittes currently writes a column for The New Republic online and is a contributing editor for The Atlantic Monthly. He is a member of the Hoover Institution Task Force on National Security and Law.

Reviews

" A rich and thoughtful volume . . . Law and the Long War addresses an impressively broad range of questions."
-Los Angeles Times

" Law and the Long War deserves to be read widely. It is one of the most balanced and nonpolemic accounts of legal issues in the war on terror to date."
-Foreign Affairs

" A strong case for adjusting our policies so that the public can support them more robustly."
-The Wall Street Journal

Wittes (research director in public law, Brookings Inst.) attempts to stake out a middle ground between civil libertarians, who see the courts as the protector against Executive Branch abuses in the war on terrorism, and Justice Department architects of the war on terror. He does an excellent job of discussing the way this country has historically treated prisoners in wartime, citing Civil War and World War II examples. In clear prose, the book starts by discussing existing laws prior to the 9/11 attacks, then dissects the Patriot Act and the tangled response of the courts to prisoner interrogations, detentions, trials, and surveillance. The central thread of the book is that the Bush administration failed to involve Congress in its decisions and flouted the Geneva Conventions. Thus, the book is a rebuttal to John Yoo's War by Other Means: An Insider's Account of the War on Terror, which argued that the Geneva Convention did not apply to al-Qaeda and that the President's broad war-making powers gave him control over terrorism, with Congress's role limited to cutting off funds. Wittes succeeds at proposing a statutory framework for fighting terrorism. Recommended for legal or current events collections in public as well as academic libraries. [See Prepub Alert, LJ 3/1/08.]--Harry Charles, Attorney at Law, St. Louis, MO Copyright 2008 Reed Business Information.

" A rich and thoughtful volume . . . Law and the Long War addresses an impressively broad range of questions."
-Los Angeles Times

" Law and the Long War deserves to be read widely. It is one of the most balanced and nonpolemic accounts of legal issues in the war on terror to date."
-Foreign Affairs

" A strong case for adjusting our policies so that the public can support them more robustly."
-The Wall Street Journal