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" June 10, 2002, the day John Ashcroft announced the arrest of Jose Padilla, marked a low point in Ashcroft's career as Attorney General. "

Benjamin Wittes

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" When it comes to letting kids out into dark alleys, we understand that they have things to steal. We need to understand that in online life, too. "

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" In a way I never did with George W. Bush or Barack Obama or Bill Clinton, I will write about the actions of the Trump presidency with the working assumption that our nation must be protected both by and from the president. "

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" A generation of women has grown up thinking of reproductive freedom as a constitutional right, and the Court should not casually take away rights that it has determined the Constitution guarantees. "

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" Conservatives complain that the Supreme Court is too liberal. Liberals complain that it's too conservative. Both charges are inaccurate: in reality the Court is a careful political actor that arguably represents the center of gravity of American politics better than most politicians do. "

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" Stability in law - particularly constitutional law - is critically important; the Supreme Court would do well to remember that. "

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" I generally favor permissive abortion laws. "

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" If the 'enemy combatant' cases of Padilla and Hamdi present a clash between liberty and security, each side champions one while giving short shrift to the other. "

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" One effect of Roe was to mobilize a permanent constituency for criminalizing abortion - a constituency that has driven much of the southern realignment toward conservatism. "

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" Full disclosure: James Comey is a friend. I won't pretend to neutrality about him. He is a highly honorable and decent person, and I have no doubt that he made the many judgments for which people loathe him in good faith. "

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" In general, liberals fear conservative judges far too much. In almost all areas, in fact, they dramatically overstate the stakes. "

Benjamin Wittes

" The idea that the president doesn't interfere in law-enforcement investigative matters is one of our deep normative expectations of the modern presidency. But it is not a matter of law. Legally, if the president of the United States wants to direct the specific conduct of investigations, that is his constitutional prerogative. "

Benjamin Wittes

" Liberals have been overselling the threat to reproductive rights for decades. "

Benjamin Wittes

" The foundations of modern civil-rights law are exceptionally secure. Conservative judges nibble around the edges sometimes, and people still debate the constitutionality of affirmative-action programs. But almost no one seriously argues about the basic meaning or legitimacy of core civil-rights protections. "

Benjamin Wittes

" The notion of law enforcement as professional, not political, began developing as an aspiration and an ethos even while, in practice, the FBI was the personal fiefdom of J. Edgar Hoover. "

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" Although environmental groups sometimes raise issues in the confirmation process, environmental protection is not central to the fear-mongering of the liberal interest groups that oppose conservative judges. But the threat to basic environmental protections from conservative jurisprudence is broad-based and severe. "

Benjamin Wittes

" The nature of constitutional delegations of power is that they entitle the empowered official to do certain things that other people can't do. "

Benjamin Wittes

" For those who support same-sex marriage - and I support it without reservation - the ideal of equality and the belief in the dignity of same-sex relationships necessarily makes the issue seem a great deal like the civil-rights struggles of the past. "

Benjamin Wittes

" Political as well as religious cults can be distinguished from legitimate organizations by their use of doublethink. Though political cults espouse extremist ideologies, not extremist theologies, operationally they are virtually identical to religious cults, and they also go to great lengths to control the vocabularies of their members. "

Benjamin Wittes

" If Trump wants to corruptly direct the conduct of an investigation in order to out an FBI source who was helping our government investigate Russian interference in our electoral processes, well, Article II of the Constitution begins with these terrifying words: 'The executive Power shall be vested in a President of the United States of America.' "

Benjamin Wittes

" There is no doubt in my mind that Article II limits to a considerable degree the application of the obstruction statutes to the president when he is acting in his capacity as chief law-enforcement officer of the country. "

Benjamin Wittes

" I normally try to ignore presidential tweets. "

Benjamin Wittes

" I don't doubt that there are many presidential acts that would constitute obstructions of justice if anyone but the president engaged in them but which constitute legitimate exercises of presidential power when the president engages in them. "

Benjamin Wittes

" The core constituency that Republicans must satisfy in high court nominations is the party's social conservative base, which fundamentally cares about issues, not diversity, and has accepted white men who practice the judging it admires. "

Benjamin Wittes

" How exactly the obstruction-of-justice statutes interact with the president's broad powers to supervise the executive branch under Article II of the Constitution is a genuinely difficult question. "

Benjamin Wittes