Constitutional Law

Obama Taps Former ACS Board Member Dawn Johnsen For Key Justice Dept. Post

President-elect Barack Obama announced today that he “intends to nominate” Dawn Johnsen, a professor of law at Indiana University School of Law, and until a few days ago an ACS Board of Directors member, as Assistant Attorney General for the Office of Legal Counsel. A statement from the president-elect’s transition Web site, Change.Gov, notes Johnsen’s ACS affiliation and also that she served as the Acting Assistant Attorney General of the Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) from 1997-98.

ACS recently distributed an article by Johnsen on reforming the Office of Legal Counsel, in which she criticizes some of the office’s legal advice on torture. That article, “All the President’s Lawyers: How to Avoid Another ‘Torture Opinion’ Debacle,” is available here. Johnsen also outlined her concerns about the role the OLC played during the Bush administration at this ACS event.

The president-elect also announced that he was nominating Elena Kagan, Dean of Harvard Law School, and a frequent ACS participant, to be the next Solicitor General.

Full post as published by ACS Blog on January 05, 2009 (boomark / email).