Visiting Scholar Jack Landman Goldsmith

Four questions for Michael B. Mukasey, President Bush's nominee for attorney general.

1. Griffin Bell, attorney general under Jimmy Carter, once wrote of the "tension between the attorney general's duty to define the legal limits of executive action in a neutral manner and the president's desire to receive legal advice that helps him do what he wants." How will you manage this tension?

2. You wrote recently that proposals for a national security court to incapacitate terrorists through preventive detention rather than criminal trials "deserve careful scrutiny by the public, and particularly by the U.S. Congress." Do you support the creation of such a court? What class of terrorists should be subject to preventive detention, and for how long? Should alleged terrorists be given the right to counsel and the right to compel witnesses?

3. In 2002 the Department of Justice opined, "Any effort by Congress to regulate the interrogations of battlefield combatants would violate the Constitution's sole vesting of the commander-in-chief authority in the president." Do you agree with this statement? How do you define the scope of the president's exclusive military powers?

4. Many of the top jobs in the Justice Department are vacant as a result of retirements or Senate refusals to confirm nominees. How does this affect the Justice Department's ability to carry out its mission of upholding the rule of law? Are these vacancies the fault of the president or the Senate? How do you plan to address the problem?

Jack Landman Goldsmith is a visiting scholar at AEI.