Law Prof. Eric Muller of Is That Legal? sat in on a speech by former Assistant Attorney General Michael Chertoff last Friday as part of a symposium on terror and the law at the University of North Carolina. Chertoff was the chief of the Criminal Division of the Justice Department until Bush nominated him for a seat on the Third Circuit Court of Appeals. He is now a judge of that Court.

Eric was impressed by Chertoff and his arguments. In fact, Eric says, Chertoff gave an "extraordinarily lucid and powerful presentation." Here's Eric's account.

[Note, we disagree with much of what Chertoff said about the Patriot Act, particularly that it "did not purport to push law beyond existing 4th Amendment doctrine." By its increase of authority for and use of FISA warrants, allowance for nationwide issuance of search warrants, and other related power increases that we've written about here many times before, the Act reduced the role of the judiciary in overseeing the warrant process, and in many cases, goes well beyond current 4th Amendment standards. For an excellent report on how the Justice Department has misled the American people on the Patriot Act, go here]

Eric says Chertoff said if there's one aspect of U.S. Post-911 policy about which he might doubt its legality, it's the indefinite detention of American citizens as enemy combatants on U.S. soil. Decisions, we might add, are made by the Defense department rather than Justice, so all in all, it sounds like in his speech, Chertoff was just another cheerleader for Ashcroft.

Eric does take issue with Chertoff's reliance on Chief Justice Rehnquist's book, All the Laws but One: Civil Liberties in Wartime, which Eric labels, "is the work of an armchair historian, and is a radically incomplete (and one-sided) account of the history."

No matter which side you're on, Eric's account is worth reading. Again, it's here.