After high school, Goldsmith attended Washington & Lee University, graduating in 1984 with a Bachelor of Arts, summa cum laude.

In April 2003 he was nominated to be a United States Assistant Attorney General, tasked with leading the prestigious Office of Legal Counsel in the Department of Justice.

The Bybee memo was directed to the Acting General Counsel of the Central Intelligence Agency in relation to interrogation of a detainee, Abu Zubaydah.

It authorized certain methods of torture (characterized by the administration as "enhanced interrogation techniques") for use with detained enemy combatants at the Guantanamo Bay detention center and other locations.

In addition, on March 14, 2003, after Goldsmith had been hired to work as a legal adviser to the General Counsel of the Department of Defense, John Yoo wrote a legal opinion at the request of the Department of Defense General Counsel, five days before the US invasion of Iraq, concluding that federal laws did not prohibit torture by interrogators of foreign subjects overseas.

)[9] By September 2002, Jack Goldsmith had been hired to work as a legal adviser to the General Counsel of the Department of Defense, William J. Haynes II.

[3] Goldsmith accompanied Haynes late that month as one of a large party of senior government appointees who traveled to military detention facilities at Guantanamo, Norfolk, Virginia, and Charleston, South Carolina to see detainees (including two United States citizens) and the conditions for enemy combatants.

Newsweek reported in 2007 that the CIA had regarded the Bybee memo as a "golden shield" against potential prosecution of officials involved in the program.

[14] On May 6, 2004, Goldsmith wrote in a 108-page memo: "We conclude only that when the nation has been thrust into an armed conflict by a foreign attack on the United States and the president determines in his role as commander in chief... that it is essential for defense against a further foreign attack to use the [wiretapping] capabilities of the [National Security Agency] within the United States, he has inherent constitutional authority" to order warrantless wiretapping—"an authority that Congress cannot curtail.

Goldsmith asserts that the president is constantly under scrutiny and checked inside and outside the executive branch by variously motivated actors—courts and Congress, but also lawyers, inspectors general, ethics watchdogs, journalists, and civil society—who generate information about what the executive branch is doing, who force it to explain its actions, and who are empowered to change these actions when the explanations fail to convince.

Goldsmith labels these multiple forms of watching and checking the presidency a "presidential synopticon," and claims that this synopticon reined in the George W. Bush administration's early excesses in the "war on terrorism," creating a consensus on counterterrorism policies by 2008 that explained the Obama administration's then-surprising decision not to change the counterterrorism policies it inherited in material ways.

But it also produces "unhappy consequences, including the harmful disclosure of national security secrets, misjudgments by the watchers of the presidency, and burdensome legal scrutiny that slows executive action."

He is largely sympathetic to the concerns of the Bush administration's terrorism policies, but believes they made a huge strategic mistake by acting unilaterally rather than seeking congressional consent soon after 9/11.

In the end, he believed the fear and concentration on hard power were counterproductive, both in the war on terror and in the extension of effective executive authority.

Moyers asked about the notable incident of his being in the hospital room of Attorney General John Ashcroft after he had been suddenly taken ill the day before.

Gonzales and Andrew Card, White House Chief of Staff, had come to try to persuade Ashcroft to change his mind and withdraw his memo.

The book makes three basic claims: first, in response to the techno-libertarianism that prevailed at the time, it argues that states had many tools to achieve effective control over internet activities within their borders.

Third, while a geographically bordered Internet has many well-known costs, it also has "many underappreciated virtues," including better satisfaction of local preferences, stability, and harm-prevention.

He has authored or co-authored the following articles, inter alia: The Special Program, a screenplay exploring Goldsmith's experiences in the Department of Justice's Office of Legal Counsel, was sold to The Weinstein Company on December 16, 2013.