Scott Horton (attorney)


Scott Horton is an American attorney known for his work in human rights law and the law of armed conflict, as well as emerging markets and international law. He graduated Texas Law School in Austin with a JD and was a partner in a large New York law firm, Patterson Belknap Webb & Tyler. He "has advised sovereigns on the pursuit of kleptocratic predecessors." In April 2007, he joined Harper's Magazine as a legal affairs and national security contributor, and he currently authors the No Comment blog at Harper's Online.
Horton has also written for American Lawyer,
"the Web's leading legal news and information network" and The Daily Beast and has been interviewed on Antiwar Radio. and the John Batchelor Show.
Horton is a lecturer at Columbia Law School, as well as a co-founder of the American University in Central Asia and of Sanghata Global. Horton is a former president of the International League for Human Rights, and he recently contributed to a report which claimed that human rights standards apply to detainees captured by the U.S. in the War on Terrorism. He "served as counsel to Andrei Sakharov and Elena Bonner, among other activists in the former Soviet Union."

Bilal Hussein case

Horton was hired by the Associated Press to represent Bilal Hussein, a Pulitzer Prize–winning photojournalist who was detained without charges by the US military for over a year.

Matthew Diaz case

Horton has written blog posts on the Harper's Magazine web site regarding the case of Guantanamo Bay detention camp whistle blower Lt. Commander Matthew Diaz.

Prescott">Prescott College">Prescott Bush and the Business Plot

In July 2007. Horton wrote an article in Harper's Magazine claiming that Prescott Bush, father of US President George H. W. Bush and grandfather of US president George W. Bush, was involved in the failed 1934 Business Plot, an attempt to remove US president Franklin D. Roosevelt from power.
However, no evidence from the source material of the congressional report, or from news reports at the time, make any mention of Bush's involvement.

Raymond Azar

On August 28, 2009 Horton asserted that the treatment of Raymond Azar in Bagram Theater Internment Facility in April 2009 by Department of Justice officials was identical to the now prohibited torture techniques CIA snatch teams had once used on "high value detainees" in the war on terror.