{"id":377078,"date":"2010-03-01T17:39:18","date_gmt":"2010-03-01T22:39:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.szone.us\/f95\/justice-embattled-executive-branch-lawyers-40169\/"},"modified":"2010-03-01T17:39:18","modified_gmt":"2010-03-01T22:39:18","slug":"justice-for-embattled-executive-branch-lawyers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/377078","title":{"rendered":"Justice for Embattled Executive Branch Lawyers"},"content":{"rendered":"
On 03.01.10 12:30 PM posted by Andrew Odell<\/p>\n

\n<ahref="http:\/\/blog.heritage.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/gavel-scalesjustice-100301.jpg">\"\"<\/p>Last month,* Associate Deputy Attorney General David Margolis <ahref="http:\/\/www.washingtontimes.com\/news\/2010\/feb\/20\/doj-no-misconduct-bush-interrogation-lawyers\/?feat=article_top10_shared">cleared the names of former Department of Justice lawyers John Yoo and Jay Bybee. Disparagingly labeled the \u0093Torture Lawyers\u0094 <ahref="http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2010\/02\/25\/opinion\/25thur1.html?ref=opinion">by the New York Times, Yoo and Bybee wrote the now-infamous memos offering legal advice to the Bush administration that authorized the use of enhanced interrogation techniques in questioning high-level terrorists. Overruling the Office of Professional Responsibility\u0092s (OPR) finding of \u0093professional misconduct,\u0094 Margolis found that Yoo and Bybee acted in good faith, ethically serving their clients in the Executive Branch in <ahref="http:\/\/online.wsj.com\/article\/SB10001424052748704757904575078182303405948.html"> time of war.<\/p>\n

This comes as no surprise, Heritage Foundation Senior Legal Fellow Hans von Spakovsky <ahref="http:\/\/www.washingtontimes.com\/news\/2010\/feb\/24\/a-vindication-of-interrogation\/">explains because the OPR\u0092s investigation and report was a total sham and part of an ideological witch hunt. Indeed, \u0093The OPR criticisms would be laughable if this were not so serious.\u0094 As just one example, OPR found Yoo and Bybee guilty of misconduct for not citing an unpublished Ninth Circuit opinion, even though the Court\u0092s own rules forbid citations to unpublished opinions. A violation of this rule, von Spakovsky notes, \u0093can subject a lawyer to sanctions for professional misconduct.\u0094<spanid="more-27719"><\/span> Furthermore, the OPR extensively cited Professor David Luban of Georgetown University as an expert to support their claim that Bybee and Yoo expounded \u0093advanced novel legal theories\u0094 and \u0093ignored relevant authority.\u0094 But \u0093they failed to mention that their supposed expert isn\u0092t even a lawyer,\u0094 von Spakovksy points out. Rather, Luban has a doctorate in philosophy, has never practiced law, and\u0097pointing to the entirely political nature of the investigation\u0097\u0093is a longtime critic of the Bush administration.\u0094 The OPR also repeatedly claimed that Yoo and Bybee had violated the rules of the District of Columbia Bar, even though they were not members of that Bar and were not required to be as Justice Department lawyers. Von Spakovsky points out the irony of the OPR\u0092s demonstrated \u0093basic lack of competence\u0097the exact charge by OPR against Mr. Yoo and Mr. Bybee.\u0094<\/p>\n

Most consequentially, however, is the OPR\u0092s criticism of Yoo and Bybee for not \u0093considering the moral implications\u0094 of enhanced interrogation techniques. Critics often censure the two for supposedly offering legal justification for torture, but Yoo and Bybee \u0093were tasked with providing pure legal analysis\u0097not moral and social critiques.\u0094 Indeed, such a flagrant injection of politics into legal matters reveals this investigation for the \u0093malicious, partisan witch hunt\u0094 it was, making \u0093what OPR did (and almost got away with doing) extremely perilous.\u0094 The extremely liberal OPR\u0092s irresponsible conduct will undoubtedly make future Justice attorneys more hesitant to provide the \u0093frank legal advice\u0094 the executive branch needs unless OPR\u0092s incompetence is exposed more broadly.<\/p>\n

Andrew Odell currently is a member of the Young Leaders Program at the Heritage Foundation. For more information on interning at Heritage, please visit:*<ahref="http:\/\/www.heritage.org\/about\/departments\/ylp.cfm">http:\/\/www.heritage.org\/about\/departments\/ylp.cfm<\/a><\/i><\/p>\n

http:\/\/blog.heritage.org\/2010\/03\/01\/27719\/<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On 03.01.10 12:30 PM posted by Andrew Odell <ahref="http:\/\/blog.heritage.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/gavel-scalesjustice-100301.jpg"><\/p>Last month,* Associate Deputy Attorney General David Margolis <ahref="http:\/\/www.washingtontimes.com\/news\/2010\/feb\/20\/doj-no-misconduct-bush-interrogation-lawyers\/?feat=article_top10_shared">cleared the names of former Department of Justice lawyers John Yoo and Jay Bybee. Disparagingly labeled the \u0093Torture Lawyers\u0094 <ahref="http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2010\/02\/25\/opinion\/25thur1.html?ref=opinion">by the New York Times, Yoo and Bybee wrote the now-infamous memos offering legal advice to the Bush administration that […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4292,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-377078","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/377078","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4292"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=377078"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/377078\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=377078"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=377078"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=377078"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}