Word: sofaer
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Deeply shaken, Sofaer yielded to the threat of a Senate subpoena last week to explain his opinion. Although he still believes the ABM treaty permits Star Wars testing, Sofaer conceded that his methodology had been flawed, a failure he attributed to young staff lawyers. Some Senators rallied to the defense of Sofaer. Democrat Ernest Hollings of South Carolina criticized his colleagues for "rushing to judgment" and argued the "record shows no ambiguity that the Soviets refused again and again to agree to prohibit future systems...
...Sofaer has consistently interpreted international law to justify activist, unilateral action by the U.S. He offered the justification for using force against nations harboring terrorists in what has become known as the "Shultz Doctrine." He supported the Administration's widely criticized decision to withdraw partly from the jurisdiction of the International Court of Justice after the court ruled against U.S. support for the Nicaraguan contras. "The U.S. is supposed to be building up international law, not destroying it," says Mark Feldman, a Washington attorney and former staffer in the legal adviser's office...
Considerable criticism dogged Sofaer's performance as head of the U.S. delegation that traveled to Jerusalem in December 1985, after Jonathan Jay Pollard was charged with spying for Israel. While the State Department issued a statement lauding the Israeli government for its "full cooperation," Justice Department officials on the delegation have charged angrily that they were "misled" by the Israelis. Jerusalem had withheld the name of Pollard's handler, Aviam Sella, and had delivered only 163 documents of the thousands purloined by Pollard. Sella was subsequently indicted in the U.S. on espionage charges, and the Justice Department is now moving...
...this, the feisty Sofaer stands high with Secretary Shultz, who hired him after admiring his performance as federal district court judge in the libel suit by former Israeli Defense Minister Ariel Sharon against TIME magazine.* The son of Sephardic Jews, Sofaer, 48, was born in Bombay, and served for a decade as a distinguished professor at Columbia Law School. From the start he was controversial at the State Department. Although the "Judge" was acknowledged to have a brilliant legal mind, his abrasiveness irritated many of his staff outside the immediate circle of newcomers he brought with...
Opinions are split on how Sofaer runs the office of legal adviser, a prestigious but traditionally little known department of some 100 lawyers that serves as principal counsel to the Secretary of State on matters of international law. To some observers, Sofaer has done no more than would be expected of an attorney serving his client -- even if that client is a policymaking arm of the U.S. Government. "Abe Sofaer is a great New York lawyer," Governor Mario Cuomo told a breakfast group. "If they tell him 'Make it legal, Abe,' he'll make it legal." Sofaer refuses...