Hoover Institution at Stanford University

The Constitution and the War

Filmed on October 29, 2006

Where should we draw the line between civil liberties and national security in the “war on terror”? Are we even at war, and if so, what are the constitutional limits to presidential war powers? Has the Bush administration gone too far in the electronic surveillance of citizens and the coercive interrogation of suspected terrorists and enemy combatants? Richard Epstein and John Yoo, both widely regarded as strict constitutional constructionists, take decidedly different positions on these questions. (41:26) Video transcript

Chapters:

01:11  This means war—or does it?
06:42  The NSA and wiretapping
15:22  Coercive interrogation
24:06  Habeas corpus
34:34  Civil liberties


Guests:

  • Richard A. Epstein

    Richard Epstein is the Peter and Kirsten Bedford Senior Fellow at Hoover. He also holds an endowed professorship at the University of Chicago Law School, where he directs the Law and Economics Program. As of 2007, he also became a visiting professor at New York University Law School. His areas of expertise include constitutional law, intellectual property, and property rights. His just-released book is Supreme Neglect: How to Revive the Constitutional Protection for Private Property.

  • John Yoo

    John Yoo is a professor of law at the University of California at Berkeley School of Law (Boalt Hall) and a visiting scholar at the American Enterprise Institute. He is the author of War By Other Means: An Insider's Account of the War on Terror.



John Yoo

John Yoo



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