Constitutional Law

Johnsen Praised During OLC Confirmation Hearing

Several members of the Senate Judiciary Committee lauded the work of Dawn Johnson, an Indiana University law professor, during her confirmation hearing yesterday to head the Office of Legal Counsel (OLC). Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) praised Johnsen for her criticisms of the OLC’s memorandums during the Bush administration that supported the use of harsh interrogations of detainees.

“The Office of Legal Counsel underwent a troubling transformation during the Bush administration,” said Feinstein at the confirmation hearing. “It became a rubber stamp for some of the administration’s worst abuses of power.” The senator said Johnsen, who was a former ACS Board of Directors member, would serve as “the conscience of the Justice Department.”

When asked by Feinstein whether torture was justifiable, Johnsen said, “No, senator, I do not.” Johnsen, like Attorney General Eric Holder during his confirmation hearing, said waterboarding was torture.

Johnsen received little opposition from other committee members regarding her criticisms for the way the OLC operated during the Bush administration, The New York Times reported. Nonetheless, Slate's Dahlia Lithwick said Johnsen's, sometimes stinging, critique of Bush's OLC didn't sit well with some of the committee's members. "She has spoken out clearly!," Lithwick wrote. "She has criticized openly! She has used language like 'outrage' and 'torture' to describe outrages and torture. Curiously enough, nobody on the committee disagrees with these legal conclusions today. They're just mainly bothered that she said them aloud." 

“Commitment to the rule of law is my overriding passion: love for our constitutional democracy and the imperative that the government belongs to the people, that the government officials who lead it are not above the law, but rather are entrusted with the fulfilling and respecting the law as well as with making it,” Johnsen told the committee.

In the fall, ACS distributed an article by Johnsen on reforming the OLC, in which she detailed steps that should be taken to ensure that the office does not issue secret and legally flawed advice to the executive branch. That article is available here.

During her testimony yesterday, Johnsen said that while she served in the OLC during the Clinton administration, she “came to understand that above all, OLC must provide the President and officials throughout the Executive Branch with accurate, honest legal interpretations; that my personal views on a subject were not what mattered; and that OLC must look to the Constitution and to statutes enacted by this body, to judicial and executive branch precedent, and to the career professionals at OLC and throughout the government who bring essential experience, expertise and judgment.”

Full post as published by ACS Blog on February 26, 2009 (boomark / email).