Benjamin
Wittes has
been an editorial writer for The
Washington Post specializing in legal affairs since 1997. He is the Post’s
principal voice on the Supreme Court, judicial nominations, civil and criminal
justice, major federal investigations, and civil liberties and
counterterrorism. He has been a contributing editor for The Atlantic Monthly, for which he wrote a column entitled, “The
Cross Examination.”
Wittes’s first
book, Starr: A
Reassessment, was published in 2002 by Yale University
Press and was described by the Weekly
Standard as “a brilliant piece of work, . . . simultaneously brief and wide
in scope, accessible to the non-specialist and attentive to detail about extraordinarily
vexing statutory and constitutional questions. . . [T]he only honest and
formidable argument would-be defenders of Kenneth Starr have ever had to
confront.” The Post’s Book
World called it “a balanced, deeply reasoned and
articulate analysis.” Wittes is also the author of the forthcoming book, Confirmation Wars:
Preserving Independent Courts in Angry Times, to be published by Rowman & Littlefield later this
year. He is currently writing a book on the federal courts of appeals.
Before joining the
editorial page staff of the Post, Wittes covered the Justice Department
and federal regulatory agencies as a reporter and news editor at Legal Times between 1994 and 1997. His
essays have also appeared in Slate, The