Jack Landman Goldsmith III (born September 26, 1962) is an American legal scholar. He serves as the Learned Hand Professor of Law at Harvard Law School, where he has written extensively in the fields of international law, civil procedure, federal courts, conflict of laws, and national security law. Writing in The New York Times, Jeffrey Rosen described him as being "widely considered one of the brightest stars in the conservative legal firmament".
In addition to being a professor at Harvard, Goldsmith is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University. He is a co-founder of the Lawfare Blog along with Brookings fellow Benjamin Wittes and Texas Law professor Robert M. Chesney.
Early life and career
Goldsmith was born in 1962 in Memphis, Tennessee. His stepfather, Charles "Chuckie" O'Brien, is widely believed to have played a role in the disappearance of Jimmy Hoffa.
Goldsmith graduated from Pine Crest School in 1980. He attended Washington & Lee University, graduating in 1984 with a Bachelor of Arts, summa cum laude. He earned a second bachelor's degree with first class honours from the University of Oxford in 1986 (promoted to MA per tradition in 1991). He then attended Yale Law School, graduating in 1989 with a Juris Doctor.
After law school, Goldsmith was a law clerk for Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson III of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit from 1989 to 1990, and for Justice Anthony Kennedy of the U.S. Supreme Court from 1990 to 1991. He then earned a diploma from The Hague Academy of International Law in 1992. Goldsmith then entered private practice at the Washington, D.C. law firm Covington & Burling from 1994 to 1996. He served as a professor at the University of Virginia Law School before going to the University of Chicago.
In 2002, Goldsmith joined the Bush administration as the Special Counsel to General Counsel of the Department of Defense, at a time when the government was developing plans for responding to the 9/11 attacks. In April 2003 he was nominated to be a United States Assistant Attorney General, tasked with leading the prestigious Office of Legal Counsel in the Department of Justice. The Senate confirmed him in October 2003. He resigned in July 2004 to join Harvard Law School. He wrote a book about his experiences there called The Terror Presidency (2007).
George W. Bush administration
In August 2002, before Goldsmith joined the George W. Bush administration, the Office of Legal Counsel, Department of Justice, had issued three documents, which became known as the Torture Memos, or the Bybee memo (referring to one in particular). The Bybee memo was directed to the Acting General Counsel of the Central Intelligence Agency in relation to interrogation of a detainee, Abu Zubaydah. It authorized certain methods of torture (characterized by the administration as "enhanced interrogation techniques") for use with detained enemy combatants at the Guantanamo Bay detention center and other locations.
In addition, on March 14, 2003, after Goldsmith had been hired to work as a legal adviser to the General Counsel of the Department of Defense, John Yoo wrote a legal opinion at the request of the Department of Defense General Counsel, five days before the US invasion of Iraq, concluding that federal laws did not prohibit torture by interrogators of foreign subjects overseas. (The memo was not revealed until 2008.)
Office of General Counsel of the Department of Defense
By September 2002, Jack Goldsmith had been hired to work as a legal adviser to the General Counsel of the Department of Defense, William J. Haynes II.
Goldsmith accompanied Haynes late that month as one of a large party of senior government appointees who traveled to military detention facilities at Guantanamo, Norfolk, Virginia, and Charleston, South Carolina to see detainees (including two United States citizens) and the conditions for enemy combatants. He had participated in discussions related to treatment.
Office of Legal Counsel, Department of Justice
In October 2003, Goldsmith was appointed to head the Office of Legal Counsel, which provides legal guidance to the US President and all executive branch agencies, including those tasked with the interrogation of enemy combatants. That gave him the base for influencing debates within the Bush administration regarding its conduct of the War on Terror.