The Loonies on the Left Just Don't Get It

Fortunately, most of Harvard's Law Faculty seems to have a modicum of sense, but the loonies on the left are still at it:

"In the first month since he arrived in Cambridge to assume a tenured post at the Law School, Professor Jack L. Goldsmith has received a frosty welcome from a small faction of faculty who have questioned his scholarship and called for an investigation into his work as a Bush administration official. More than 80 percent of the school's faculty voted by secret ballot to confirm Goldsmith's tenure appointment in the spring, and longtime Harvard Law professors have rallied to defend their new colleague as well as to praise his academic credentials. But a small group of senior faculty members who voted against Goldsmith's appointment have chosen to go public with their criticism of the professor. Before he stepped down from his post as a U.S. assistant attorney general this summer, Goldsmith penned a March draft memo arguing that Central Intelligence Agency officials could transfer Iraqi detainees out of their native country for interrogation without violating the Geneva Convention. The memo said that detainees would still have to be treated in accordance with international humanitarian norms. But Goldsmith's position has drawn fire from human rights activists and some scholars who argue that the memo marks a dramatic reinterpretation of the 1949 treaty, which safeguards the rights of prisoners of war."

What the small group of law professors -- who really ought to know better -- don't get is that the Geneva convention is a contractual arrangement, and applies only to countries that have signed on. And (correct me if I'm wrong here) Iraq never signed on.