Second Circuit Orders Release of Administration's Justification for Targeted Killing

Steven D. Schwinn, John Marshall Law School

The Second Circuit ruled earlier this week that the government must release a redacted version of an Office of Legal Counsel memo outlining the government's legal authority to conduct targeted killings.  The case, New York Times v. Department of Justice, is a FOIA case seeking the OLC memo, and not a legal challenge to the targeted killing program itself.  The court said that the government had released so much information about its legal justification--including the white paper that the government leaked to the media last year--that the government couldn't really claim that the legal justification was still secret.

We posted on the white paper here, with links to earlier posts (and to the white paper itself), and most recently on legal challenges to the targeted killing program here.