Torture: How far can a government lawyer go?

[struggle4progress]

A client asks his lawyer a question: During an interrogation of a suspected terrorist, how much pain can I legally inflict?

The lawyer should:

a) Explore every legal avenue available for his client, including all possible defenses should criminal charges be filed.
b) Give legal guidance but add advice on the wisdom and morality of what the client is considering.
c) Tell the client to take a walk.

The lawyers at the Justice Department who prepared the memos concerning torture seemed to have decided on Option A.

These memos, released last week, raise profound questions about the ethical and moral limits of what lawyers can and should do in advising their clients. It is hardly unusual, of course, for lawyers in private practice to give narrow and comprehensive advice on how to comply with, say, the tax laws to maximum advantage. But lawyers serving private clients rarely confront questions as morally perilous as torture.
<snip>
http://www.abs-cbnnews.com/NewsStory.aspx?section=Focus&oid=53983


Impeach Jay Bybee. He used his position as a government lawyer to aid and abet torturers. He doesn't belong on the federal bench.

[shraby]

1. Lawyers aren't supposed to

be in the business of advising their clients on how to break the law then what to do if they get caught.

[struggle4progress]

2. So can we snag Bybee on this ethics hook? eom

[Trillo]

3. Good article.

From the article:
“If you set loose very smart and very energetic lawyers and tell them their task is to justify the unjustifiable, they will do it,” he said.

I wonder if this is precisely why so many jokes are made about lawyers. It's said that in every bit of humor, there's a kernel of truth. That the above statement is even possible is not a testament to the value of having a lawyer, rather it points to the failure of logic to apply to the written word.

I can only speak for myself, but if words are of so little value in determining the variety of interpretations that lawyers gaming the system might create, then ultimately, what is the point of a Legislative Branch?

Is it just another branch of power, instead of public good? Just another way for the people to be subservient to the whims of a few and the smoke and mirrors of words?

[Trillo]

4. A little more:

One of the scenes in F-9/11 really floored me--and it wasn't about Bush--it was the Congressman who admitted they vote on bills without even reading them. Something was said that was similar to: even if they wanted to read all of them, there just wasn't enough time to do so.

How can our system of legislative representation possibly work if our Senators and Representatives don't read the bills they're voting on? If everything in politics is reduced to a deal, "you vote for this bill of mine, and I'll vote for yours", and if there are so many bills that there just isn't time enough in every working day for every legislator to read them all, then isn't that a gross failure of the whole concept of representation?

[OldCurmudgeon]

5. this particular bill was an exception

there's a website (I can't recall it offhand, but google can find it for you) that tracks bills going through congress...all the votes, amendments, conferences, etc. Most bills take months to get through congress, so there's plenty of time for congressmen and their staffs to look them over.

The exception is those few bills that the Repug leadership wants to ramrod through congress. It's the congressional leadership that sets the calendar, slow-walks making the bill available for members to read, etc., and that leadership has an (R) after it.

The usual reason for wanting to ram bills through without anyone looking at them is that, if they *did* look, they would strongly object. Can't have that. Not in Bush's Amurka.

[struggle4progress]

6. Some, presumably in the know, have told me that in many cases ...

the staff, rather than the Senator or Representative, are the ones who actually read the bill, providing summaries/recommendations to the person who actually casts the vote. I believe this is part of the reason that a person's reputation for honesty with other members of Congress was considered so important: even if months were available, there were still too many bills, with too many technical details, for any one person to research and master fully.

[Trillo]

7. True. As I understand it,

this memo was intended as an interpretation of existing law for the Executive Branch, so it's not a bill under consideration by congress. The article suggests that "aggressive" law interpretations are often done in the private sector, but this "torture memo" extreme interpretation is new for government legal advice. My limited understanding of the logistics of legislation suggests that is a naive view, although probably accurate insofar as it reaches.

I find the "legal" correlation to the legislative branch (a lot of lawyers there) interesting. To suggest that legal interpretation by government lawyers is not aggressive when one views our laws with the perspective that the most aggressive lawyers are likely behind most of the successful lobbying that is done for corporate America, skews the issue.

There have been news reports of "bills" under consideration that appear to be written by legislators, but when "file properties" were viewed, corporate sources were attributed as source authors.

This suggests to me, clearly, that the most aggressive, creative lawyers, the corporate types, are actively involved in the creation of legislation under consideration by congress.

Therefore, I view the suggestion in this article that "aggressive interpretations" being relatively rare in government legal work is at best a red-herring that might have a propagandizing effect skewing and minimizing the effect of the private sector upon the public one.

1) The true power should be in writing the laws in the first place,
2) the second most powerful manipulation is in interpreting those laws.

The torture memo interpretation falls under the second one above. The first power lies with congress, and they don't always read the bills they vote on!

[teryang]

8. The memo was completely bogus

Yoo is unethical and incompetent.

He should be disbarred.

No lawyer can encourage his client to break the law. His discussion of pain thresholds is incompetent and not backed by any authority. In fact, his whole memo and argument is completely legally unfounded.

You'd be hard pressed to find any lawyers to support that memo. If you do and inquired into their background, you'll find they know nothing about military or international law.