The Art of Stealth

Speaking of constitutional moments, the stealth candidate that Bruce Ackerman (Yale, Law) warned of in "The Art of Stealth," in the London Review of Books (Feb. 2005) ) has, after the Roberts's confirmation, apparently dropped off his radar screen: see the American Prospect (Sept. 2005), "The Constitutional Moment That Wasn't".  From the February piece: "Bush’s favourite stealth candidate may well be an administration lawyer who has, in one way or another, helped construct the president’s extreme arguments for expanded powers as commander in chief."  From the September piece: "But now it is plain that Bush's transformative ambitions have been shattered beyond all recall....President Bush recognize[s] that he lacks a popular mandate for revolutionary constitutional change.  In nominating Roberts, he has indeed made this crucial concession."  But Miers is "“one of the key supporters in the Bush administration of staying the course on legal issues arising from the war on terrorism”  as reported here.  Ronald Dworkin (NYU, Law and Philosophy) thinks Roberts was Stealth I, according to this piece in the New York Review of Books, which draws out the implications of Robert's opinion in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld, 415 F.3d 33 (2005): "The danger is...that Roberts will join with the other conservative justices in extending the President's power to conduct his war against terrorism without regard for either international law or the traditional rights of prisoners."  That would make Miers Stealth II.  "Bush can be bitingly clever when he wants to be," Bill Dickerson cautions, over at Slate.  Even stealthy.