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WPR Compliance Hearing in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee?

Robert Chesney
Thursday, June 16, 2011, 6:29 PM
Josh Rogin at The Cable reports that Senators Kerry and Lugar agree that there should be a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing on WPR compliance in relation to Libya. So many interesting possibilities there if it actually happens.  For example, will the SFRC attempt to unpack the interagency legal debate, and in particular will it try to pin down how OLC came down (if at all) on this issue?  The administration surely would resist efforts along those lines on privileg

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Josh Rogin at The Cable reports that Senators Kerry and Lugar agree that there should be a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing on WPR compliance in relation to Libya. So many interesting possibilities there if it actually happens.  For example, will the SFRC attempt to unpack the interagency legal debate, and in particular will it try to pin down how OLC came down (if at all) on this issue?  The administration surely would resist efforts along those lines on privilege grounds.  More interesting, to me at least, is whether Congress will be content with raking an administration representative over the coals at a hearing, or if instead this will become just the first step along the way to a legislative response (as I speculated earlier today).

Robert (Bobby) Chesney is the Dean of the University of Texas School of Law, where he also holds the James A. Baker III Chair in the Rule of Law and World Affairs at UT. He is known internationally for his scholarship relating both to cybersecurity and national security. He is a co-founder of Lawfare, the nation’s leading online source for analysis of national security legal issues, and he co-hosts the popular show The National Security Law Podcast.

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