Atlantic Unbound Archive

Stuart Taylor Jr.

Recent articles by Stuart Taylor Jr.

July 31, 2007

Shortsighted on Judges

Senate Democrats are playing a dangerous political game in opposing confirmation of Leslie Southwick, a wellqualified judicial nominee from Mississippi.

August 7, 2007

Innocents in Prison

Many thousands of wrongly convicted people are rotting in prisons and jails around the country.

July 10, 2007

Is There a Middle Ground on Race?

The Supreme Court decision on school integration illustrates the pitfalls of both the conservative and the liberal approaches to the problem of race.

July 24, 2007

Are the Democrats Serious?

Both sides deserve to lose the brewing battle between the White House and Congress over executive privilege.

June 5, 2007

How Not to Make Terrorism Policy

Former State Department official Philip Zelikow has opened a window into how the Bush administration's antiterrorism policy-making process went wrong.

June 12, 2007

'Injustice 5, Justice 4'

The media's portrayal of a May 29 Supreme Court ruling on sex-based pay discrimination was way off the mark.

June 19, 2007

A Judicial Overreaction to Bush Abuses?

Congress needs to rethink the war on terrorism's detention and interrogation policy from the ground up.

May 1, 2007

'Issue Ads' and Common Sense

Supreme Court justices seemed to be missing the point during oral arguments over curbs that the McCain-Feingold campaign finance law imposes on free speech.

May 8, 2007

Congress Should Censure Gonzales

A vote by Congress to censure Alberto Gonzales would be both constitutional and supported by precedent.

May 15, 2007

Terrorism Suspects and the Law

No satisfactory resolution of the debate over the treatment of suspected terrorists is likely until at least 2009.

May 22, 2007

Another Gonzales Horror Story

Every day that Attorney General Alberto Gonzales is allowed to remain in office is corrosive to constitutional governance.

May 29, 2007

'Hate Crimes' and Double Standards

The House-passed hate crimes bill is an example of feel-good legislation likely to do more harm than good.

April 10, 2007

'Rape' and the Navy's P.C. Police

A bogus rape charge shouldn't derail the Navy career of 23-year-old Lamar Owens Jr., the former quarterback of the Naval Academy's football team.

March 6, 2007

The Supreme Court: Place Your Bets

A look at how the Supreme Court might change constitutional law on abortion, gay rights, and other big issues.

March 20, 2007

A Right to Keep and Bear Arms?

An appeals court ruling striking down a D.C. gun control law is right and should be affirmed.

March 27, 2007

Choosing the Next Attorney General

Running the Justice Department is a big, big job that can be done well only by people with superior abilities and judgment.

February 6, 2007

The Great Black-White Hope

An Obama win in 2008 would be by far the best thing that has happened to African-Americans, and to race relations, in more than 50 years.

February 13, 2007

Irrational Sentencing, Top to Bottom

Does it make sense that we punish corporate malefactors who lie to stockholders more seriously than we punish most murders?

February 27, 2007

The Case for a National Security Court

For the good of the war on terrorism, the United States needs to create a National Security Court to try enemy combatants.

December 5, 2006

Global Warming: Time for a Court Order

The Supreme Court should rule that EPA's posture about the dangers of global warming violates the Clean Air Act.

December 12, 2006

A Different Way to Integrate Schools

Socioeconomic integration is more effective than racial balancing in improving the academic performance of poor children.

December 20, 2006

This Time, Let's Get It Right

In the new year, Congress should resolve to repair the deeply flawed system for detaining terrorism suspects.

September 2006

Catastrophe Management

Michael Chertoff tells Atlantic contributor Stuart Taylor Jr. what it’s like to run the Department of Homeland Security. An edited transcript. (For the full transcript, click here).

July 24, 2006

Catastrophe Management

Michael Chertoff tells Atlantic contributor Stuart Taylor Jr. what it's like to run the Department of Homeland Security. The full transcript.

July 4, 2006

Supreme Confusion

The Supreme Court's ruling on the Texas redistricting case illustrates a recurring problem: The Court has a tendency to make things more confusing, not more clear.

June 13, 2006

Gay Marriage and the Estate Tax

If there's poetic justice, the Republicans' focus on gay marriage and the estate tax will spur independent swing voters to sweep them from power.

June 20, 2006

How Racial Preferences Backfire

Most young black lawyers, according to a new study, do not fare well in large law firms precisely because of the racial preferences that get them hired in the first place.

June 27, 2006

Where's the Outrage?

Republicans who minimize the CIA leak case resemble Democrats who trivialized the Monica Lewinsky case.

May 16, 2006

More Racial Gerrymanders

Beware of bipartisan legislation to extend a provision of the Voting Rights Act. The measure has little to do with voting rights.

May 23, 2006

In Duke Case, a Rogues' Gallery

Academics and journalists have joined in smearing presumptively innocent young Duke lacrosse players as racist, sexist brutes.

May 30, 2006

Dumb and Dumber

Does Attorney General Alberto Gonzales think that the Bush administration has the power to nullify the First Amendment?

April 11, 2006

Missing From the Immigration Debate

Efforts to control illegal immigration will be futile unless Congress requires workers to have forgery-proof, theft-proof identity cards.

April 25, 2006

Emergency Powers Should Be Temporary

President Bush was right to start the domestic eavesdropping program during the post-9/11 emergency—but wrong to keep its existence secret and to resist congressional regulation.

April 29, 2006

An Outrageous Rush to Judgment

The media's trashing of Duke's lacrosse team is in full cry even as the district attorney's case is falling apart.

April 2006

The Man Who Would Be King

George W. Bush threatens creeping autocracy unless Congress and the courts act jointly—and forcefully—to stop him.

March 7, 2006

The Trouble With Texas

Arguments in the Texas redistricting case show that the Supreme Court has no idea how to fix the mess that it has made of our politics.

March 21, 2006

In Praise of Judicial Modesty

Supreme Court justices should exercise judicial modesty, in the sense of great hesitation to second-guess decisions by other branches of government.

March 28, 2006

Decommission the Commissions

The Supreme Court would be doing the president—and the country—a favor if it put the military commissions established to deal with terrorism suspects out of their misery.

February 7, 2006

Falsehoods About Guantanamo

The administration's unspoken logic regarding enemy combatants appears to be: Better to ruin the lives of 10 innocent men than to let one who might be a terrorist go free.

February 14, 2006

Dangerous Claims, Slippery Games

President Bush and his aides are twisting facts as well as law in their obsession with avoiding oversight of his electronic surveillance program.

February 21, 2006

Wiretaps: How to Fix FISA

In the eavesdropping arena, giving the judiciary overly broad power to second-guess the executive could be a cure worse than the disease.

February 28, 2006

Leak Prosecutions: The Gathering Storm

Some officials are itching to use the threat of long jail terms and massive fines to force reporters to finger their confidential sources.

January 10, 2006

The Case of Alito v. O'Connor

Samuel Alito believes that judges should be constrained by established legal rules and hard facts—and not be looking to promote political agendas.

January 17, 2006

Honest Nominees and Artless Dodgers

No Supreme Court nominee of integrity could be confirmed if he or she gave direct and candid answers.

January 31, 2006

Bush and His Critics Miss the Point

President Bush and his critics should focus on amending the law regarding domestic surveillance.

December 20, 2005

Coercive Interrogation: Can Anyone Straighten Out This Mess?

Can anyone straighten out the mess over coercive interrogation methods? The best hopes seem to be Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., and perhaps Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice.

December 6, 2005

Abortion Battles Without Much Effect On Abortions

As is usual in abortion battles, the interest-group hysteria and media hype overstate what's really at stake in the cases currently before the Supreme Court.

December 13, 2005

Alito: A Sampling of Misleading Media Coverage

The systematic slanting—conscious or unconscious—of news reports has helped fuel a disingenuous campaign to caricature Samuel Alito as a conservative ideologue.

November 1, 2005

The Lesson Of Miers: Excellence Should Be Paramount

The withdrawal of the Harriet Miers nomination shows that excellence does matter and that mediocrity isn't always rewarded.

November 8, 2005

Borking Alito: He Is Neither Far-Right Nor Activist

The claims that Samuel Alito is "a far-right activist" are laughable, except to the far-left activists. He takes the ideal of judicial restraint very seriously.

November 15, 2005

On This Issue, Bush and Cheney Need Adult Supervision

Congress and the Supreme Court are moving toward reining in the Bush administration's gratuitously harsh and arbitrary treatment of suspected enemy combatants. Better late than never.

November 22, 2005

Alito and His Critics: Who Is Outside the Mainstream?

Samuel Alito's 1985 job application, when considered together with his 300 judicial opinions, places him much closer than his critics to the center of American public opinion.

October 4, 2005

Problems With 'Privacy,' and What to Do About Roe

As the John Roberts hearings demonstrated, the nebulous "right to privacy" has become holy writ and, for some, codespeak for abortion and gay rights.

October 11, 2005

Is the President's Crony Good Enough for the Court?

The Senate should reject any Supreme Court nominee who has not proven herself to have extraordinary ability and independence of judgment unskewed by loyalty.

October 18, 2005

Does Miers Have What It Takes to Excel on the Bench?

The most conspicuous exemplars of Miers's writing ability may be her notes telling then-gov. Bush he was "the best."

October 25, 2005

The CIA Leak Scandal: A Gallery of Antiheroes

Perhaps the most depressing thing about the CIA leak investigation is that so many of the principal players have been guilty of ignoble conduct.

September 6, 2005

How John Roberts Might Change the Law

Roberts may well tip the Court's precarious balance to the right on some big issues.

September 13, 2005

The Roberts Court

As Chief Justice, John Roberts would help decide whether courts will check the president's power to fight terrorism.

September 27, 2005

Young John Roberts: Reasonable on Civil Rights

John Roberts's views on civil rights during the 1980s and early 1990s were far more defensible than the media coverage might suggest.

September 20, 2005

Why Must We Roll the Dice on a New Chief Justice?

There is undeniably something strange and undemocratic about conferring one of the nation's most powerful offices upon a man who won't tell us what he thinks.

September 2005

Remote Control

The Supreme Court's greatest failing is not ideological bias—it's the justices' increasingly tenuous grasp of how the real world works.

August 2, 2005

Why Roberts Shouldn't Tell Us What He Thinks

Candor at a confirmation hearing could corrupt the integrity and independence of a new justice.

July 5, 2005

How O'Connor and the Court Have Drifted Leftward

It has become increasingly common over the past two decades to see Sandra Day O'Connor side with the Supreme Court's four most liberal members.

July 19, 2005

Five Reasons Not to Put Gonzales On the Court

Being a friend of the president shouldn't be your main qualification to serve on the Supreme Court. Alberto Gonzales doesn't deserve to be nominated.

June 14, 2005

Liberal Drug Warriors! Conservative Pot-Coddlers!

The Supreme Court's decision to allow federal prosecution of medical-marijuana users was less about medical marijuana than about congressional power to override state law.

June 28, 2005

Life Tenure Is Too Long for Supreme Court Justices

Allowing Supreme Court justices to serve for life is causing too many problems. It's time to consider setting 18-year term limits for all future justices.

May 3, 2005

Does the President Agree With This Nominee?

Why are Democrats blocking Janice Rogers Brown from serving on the federal appeals court? A look at her speeches and judicial opinions shows why.

May 10, 2005

Filibusters: Two Wrongs Won't Make Things Right

This fight is not about principle, it's about politics. It's the kind of dispute a healthy democracy resolves by compromise.

May 17, 2005

Lloyd Cutler: The Last Superlawyer

There will never be another superlawyer on the scale of Lloyd Cutler, who died on May 8 at the age of 87. He was the preeminent statesman of his generation.

May 31, 2005

The Moderates Take Charge!

The best thing about the deal on filibusters is that it should deter President Bush from picking a conservative idealogue to fill any Supreme Court vacancy.

April 5, 2005

What Terri Schiavo's Case Should Teach Us

The choices we face are all the harder because they are not only about religion. They are also about money.

April 19, 2005

Patriot Act Hysteria Meets Reality

The emerging expert consensus contradicts the hype: for the most part, the Patriot Act is a good law.

April 26, 2005

How the Republicans Lost Their Majority

How detonating the "nuclear option" could end up costing Republicans the House, the Senate, and the presidency in 2008.

March 1, 2005

Males, Females, and Math: the Evidence

By shouting down all discussion of innate male-female differences, feminist censors are advancing their own agenda.

March 8, 2005

The Court, and Foreign Friends, as Constitutional Convention

The Supreme Court veered into making law, rather than interpreting it, in barring capital punishment for juvenile offenders.

March 15, 2005

Revisiting Iraq, and Rooting for Bush

More and more Bush-bashers are flirting with the heresy that he may just have been right.

March 22, 2005

Moderate Republicans Should Not Go 'Nuclear'—Yet

Both Republicans and Democrats claim that the Constitution is on their side in the battle over filibusters of judicial nominees. Both are wrong.

February 1, 2005

Better Justice: Bush's Missed Opportunity

A crudely designed damage cap is no remedy for the malpractice problem. The system needs major surgery.

February 8, 2005

Why Feminist Careerists Neutered Larry Summers

The hysteria about Summers furthers the career agendas of feminists who seek quotas for themselves and their friends.

February 15, 2005

Arnold's Amendment: Moderates Strike Back

Redistricting reform would remove a major cause of bitter ideological polarization.

February 22, 2005

Genocide in Darfur: Crime Without Punishment?

Only the International Criminal Court is ready, willing, and able to investigate war crimes in Darfur now.

January 25, 2005

How to End Interbranch Warfare on Criminal Sentencing

The Supreme Court's bold re-engineering of federal sentencing law might work reasonably well as a matter of policy.

July 11, 2006

Distorting the Law and Facts in the Torture Debate

A fog of confusion surrounds the question of what can be done to extract potentially lifesaving information.

November 16, 2004

The Problem With Alberto Gonzales

The problem with Alberto Gonzales is that he has been deeply involved in developing some of the most sweeping claims of near-dictatorial presidential power in our nation's history.

February 5, 2002

We Don't Need to Be Scofflaws to Attack Terror

Disregarding the Geneva Conventions will undermine the ability of the United States to wage war.