Marjorie Cohn

The Unitary Executive Strikes Back: The PATRIOT Act and the U.S. Attorney Scandal

Marjorie Cohn discusses the firing of the U.S. attorneys, particularly Carol Lamm (the one who prosecuted Duke Cunningham and Dusty Foggo), the new PATRIOT Act provision that makes it so that the Attorney General can appoint new U.S. attorneys without Senate confirmation, Gonzales’s Soviet theory of state-granted rights and his lifting of the phrase “quaint and obsolete” in regards to torture provisions in the Geneva Conventions from the German Nazis.

MP3 here. (9:05)

Marjorie Cohn is president of the National Lawyers Guild and a professor at Thomas Jefferson School of Law, where she teaches criminal law and procedure, evidence, and international human rights law. She lectures throughout the world on human rights and US foreign policy.