“She has written critically about legal opinions under Bush that addressed the war in Iraq, interrogation methods, a military tribunal system denying certain rights to detainees captured in the war on terrorism and Bush’s use of presidential signing statements to ignore provisions of new law.”

(Indystar.com) The nomination of the Indiana University professor tapped by President Barack Obama to become a top legal adviser has effectively been tabled by Congress.

The Bloomington Herald-Times reported that Dawn Johnsen is one of six nominees who failed to receive a vote before the Senate recessed this month. Without a vote or action to carry over the nomination to the next session, it is up to the White House to decide whether to renominate the candidates or consider some other action.

The president has made no statement about his intentions on the issue.
The IU law professor was an ardent critic of the Department of Justice during the two terms of President George W. Bush. She joined IU in 1998 after spending five years at the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel, including two years as its acting assistant attorney general.

Obama had nominated her to head that office.

Her husband, John Hamilton, served on the board of Monroe County Community Schools and is president of City First Enterprises, which invests in neighborhoods in Washington, D.C. Hamilton headed the Indiana Department of Environmental Management and the Family and Social Services Administration under then-Gov. Frank O’Bannon.
Reached by the Herald-Tribune on Tuesday afternoon as he shepherded nieces and nephews around the Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C., he said he couldn’t speculate on what the administration’s decision might be regarding renominating his wife, but he chose to remain hopeful.

“We’re enjoying our vacation,” he said, “looking forward to health care being done, and looking forward to the conformation process continuing.”
Johnsen and her family have moved to Washington, and she has commuted between there and Bloomington in recent months.

Johnsen was nominated last January and approved by the Senate Judiciary Committee in a vote along party lines in March, but she never received a vote by the full Senate.

The Senate approved 30 Obama appointees before the session ended, but failed to act on six, according to the Washington Post. The other five are Christopher Schroeder and Mary Smith as assistant attorney generals, Louis Butler and Edward Chen for the U.S. District Courts and Craig Becker for the National Labor Relations Board.

The native New Yorker’s politics lean to the left — Johnsen once was the legal director of NARAL Pro-Choice America — and in recent years, she has devoted her advocacy to concerns about terrorism policies under Bush.

Johnsen challenged attempts to regulate abortion in the late 1980s and early 1990s, and her stance on the issue may have drawn opposition from social conservatives in the Senate.

Saying “no,” Johnsen told her students, is the most important role for a lawyer advising the White House on the boundaries of presidential power.

She has written critically about legal opinions under Bush that addressed the war in Iraq, interrogation methods, a military tribunal system denying certain rights to detainees captured in the war on terrorism and Bush’s use of presidential signing statements to ignore provisions of new laws.

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