Check on power

Presidents need to be guided by the U.S. Constitution, and there is an office that advises them on their obligations under that document and federal law.

That entity is the Office of Legal Counsel (OLC), which comes to public attention only when it makes a controversial decision. In the Bush administration, the OLC gave the president wide authority to order coercive treatment of foreign detainees.

Former members of the OLC have criticized the current office for key decisions during the Bush years, primarily in the area of counterterrorism and particularly interrogation techniques, USA Today noted.

Dawn Johnsen, a law professor at Indiana University, served on the OLC during President Bill Clinton's administration and is now leading a presidential transition team for Justice and Civil Rights. Testifying before a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing earlier this year, she said the OLC gave "plainly erroneous" views on President Bush's power under the Constitution.

Ms. Johnsen disputed the office's opinion that Congress could not place a check on the president's decisions on interrogating enemy combatants. She and 18 other attorneys who worked at OLC provided Congress with 10 principles for the office. Of that group, three are on President-elect Obama's Justice and Civil Rights transition team, USA Today pointed out.

Decisions by the OLC, which counts Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia and former Chief Justice William Rehnquist among its former members, are often binding. Judgments rendered by the office early in the Bush administration sanctioned U.S. mistreatment of prisoners in Iraq and Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

Choices for the rather obscure office matter. Harvard University law professor Laurence Tribe said: "There's never been a time when the Office of Legal Counsel was more obviously important than it is now, precisely because it has been so abused."