The Constitution and the War
Filmed on October 29, 2006

John Yoo

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.

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 is also a visiting professor at New York University Law School. His areas of expertise include constitutional law and property rights, among others. 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.