Jameel Jaffer

Jameel Jaffer is a human rights and civil liberties attorney and the inaugural director of the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University, which was created to defend the freedoms of speech and the press in the digital age. Jaffer is particularly notable for the role he played in litigating Freedom of Information Act requests that led to the release of documents concerning the torture of prisoners held at the Guantanamo Bay detention camp and in CIA black sites.

Quotations

• President Obama has spoken eloquently about the importance of restoring America’s moral authority abroad. Restoring that moral authority, though, will require restoring the rule of law at home, and restoring the rule of law at home will require finally confronting the gross human rights abuses of the last administration. Crucial to this process will be the creation of a comprehensive and publicly accessible record of the last eight years.
  • The Torture Report, Huffpost, (24 November 2009)

• Justice Alito’s opinion for the court seems to be based on the theory that the secret court may one day, in some as-yet unimagined case, subject the law to constitutional review, but that day may never come. In many national security cases, the government has prevailed at the outset by citing lack of standing, the state secrets doctrine or officials’ immunity from suit.... More than a decade after 9/11, we still have no judicial ruling on the lawfulness of torture, of extraordinary rendition, of targeted killings or of the warrantless wiretapping program. These programs were all contested in the public sphere, but they have not been contested in the courts.”
  • Quoted in: Justices Turn Back Challenge to Broader U.S. Eavesdropping, By Adam Liptak, The New York Times (26 February 2013)

• Our request was relatively broad because we don’t think the public can meaningfully evaluate the lawfulness of the strike that killed al-Aulaqi and Samir Khan—or the strike that killed 16-year-old Abdulrahman al-Aulaqi two weeks later—without access to the factual basis the government relied on to justify the strikes. We also believe that the public is entitled to records relating to civilian casualties.... Once the Second Circuit remands our case to the district court, the ACLU will almost certainly be litigating not only over the other OLC memos but over this kind of factual information as well.
  • The Drone Memo Cometh, by Jameel Jaffer, Just Security (21 June 2014)

• I am excited about this opportunity to build an organization dedicated to a mission that’s so essential in a free society,” he said in the statement.
  • Quoted in: Columbia University names 1st director of First Amendment Institute, Nolan D. McCaskill, Politico (29 June 2016)

• I do think that the decision is important and surprising, a very significant victory for Julian Assange. I think the press freedom implications are more complicated. The judge — while ultimately holding that Assange can’t be extradited to the United States on the basis of his mental health and the conditions under which he would be held if he were extradited here, the judge largely endorses the U.S. prosecution theory. And that theory is based on an indictment that sweeps very, very broadly, that basically the indictment is an effort to hold Assange criminally responsible for acts that journalists engage in all the time. And it doesn’t matter whether Assange himself is properly characterized as a journalist. That may be an important debate, but legally it’s completely irrelevant.
  
  • Speaking in interview with Amy Goodman, “Victory for Julian”: U.K. Blocks WikiLeaks Founder Assange Extradition to U.S. on Espionage Charges, Democracy Now, (4 January 2021)

• The important fact is that Assange has been indicted on the grounds that he engaged in activities like cultivating confidential sources, maintaining their confidentiality or maintaining the confidentiality of their identities, and publishing classified secrets. And, of course, those things, all of those things, are integral to national security journalism.
  • Speaking in interview with Amy Goodman, “Victory for Julian”: U.K. Blocks WikiLeaks Founder Assange Extradition to U.S. on Espionage Charges, Democracy Now, (4 January 2021)

• And the press freedom fear here is that the prosecution of Assange, and even the indictment itself, will deter journalism that is important and necessary and that should be regarded as protected by the First Amendment. And I think that this ruling is, again, a victory for Assange, but insofar as it’s an endorsement of the U.S.’s prosecution theory and of the underlying indictment, I think that that indictment is going to continue to cast a kind of shadow over investigative journalism.
  • Speaking in interview with Amy Goodman, “Victory for Julian”: U.K. Blocks WikiLeaks Founder Assange Extradition to U.S. on Espionage Charges, Democracy Now, (4 January 2021)

Quotes about

• This is a compelling exposé of the sophisticated and concerted efforts by Obama Administration officials to thoroughly subvert the international rule of law in the pursuit of minor short-term military gains and at the expense of American credibility.
  • Philip Alston, comments about The Drone Memos Targeted Killing, Secrecy, and the Law, Edited by: Jameel Jaffer, The New Press, ISBN-13: 978-1620972595 (15 November 2016)

• The sad fact, as Jaffer notes, is that Democrats who protested when George W. Bush claimed broad war powers were quite willing to help Barack Obama claim even broader ones. The result is that the counterproductive, colossally wasteful, deeply unethical, and endlessly expanding ‘war on terror’ has now become a permanent bipartisan fixture of our foreign policy. Jaffer’s introduction is careful and fair—some might say too fair—but it is a devastating indictment of the irresponsible and short-sighted arguments that the Obama administration made in secret memos and then in open court.
  • Glenn Greenwald, comments about The Drone Memos Targeted Killing, Secrecy, and the Law, Edited by: Jameel Jaffer, The New Press, ISBN-13: 978-1620972595 (15 November 2016)

• Armed drones have given the United States the power to kill individuals anywhere, even far from conventional battlefields, but the United States has failed to articulate clear limits on their use—let alone subscribe to the limits imposed by international law. As Jaffer’s book makes clear, that failure has grave implications as the technology of killer drones inevitably spreads to other countries.
  • Ken Roth, comments about The Drone Memos Targeted Killing, Secrecy, and the Law, Edited by: Jameel Jaffer, The New Press, ISBN-13: 978-1620972595 (15 November 2016)

• Democracies may be more fragile than we care to admit, existing perhaps one election from tyranny. At a time in history when those words blink red in the mind, this investigation shows the dangers of investing government with the power to kill suspected enemies in secret. Jaffer and his team perform a lasting public service by exposing the ‘targeted killing’ policies, and Jaffer’s introductory essay is a much-needed corrective to the linguistic manipulation and official obfuscation that have made these policies possible.
  • Edward J. Snowden comments about The Drone Memos Targeted Killing, Secrecy, and the Law, Edited by: Jameel Jaffer, The New Press, ISBN-13: 978-1620972595 (15 November 2016)

• Columbia University President Lee C. Bollinger on Tuesday announced Jameel Jaffer of the ACLU as founding director of the First Amendment Institute, which was created to work to preserve and expand freedoms in the digital age.... “We’re at a moment in our history when freedom of expression, access to information and high quality journalism have never been more important, yet are facing unprecedented challenges,” Bollinger said in a statement. “No one understands that better than Jameel Jaffer. Throughout his accomplished career, Jameel has proven himself to be among the First Amendment’s most effective defenders and we could hardly have a more ideal founding director of the Knight Institute at Columbia.” Jaffer, who joined ACLU nearly 15 years ago, has litigated a number of notable cases involving national security and civil liberties, including constitutional challenges to gag orders under the USA Patriot Act and National Security Agency surveillance.
  • Columbia University names 1st director of First Amendment Institute, Nolan D. McCaskill, Politico (29 June 2016)