Legal News

What to Do About John C. Yoo?

By Ashby Jones

What to do about John C. Yoo?

That’s the question posited today in a NYT front-pager.

Yoo, a law professor at Berkeley, was, as many LB Readers know, a high-ranking DOJ lawyer during the Bush administration. He authored several legal memorandums which wound up framing the Bush administration’s approach to the War on Terror. Yoo and other high-ranking administration lawyers asserted that President Bush could bypass the Geneva Conventions and cleared the way for aggressive policies - like waterboarding and other harsh interrogation techniques. By blessing such actions as legal, Yoo and others ensured that neither policy makers nor operatives could later face criminal prosecution.

Now, with a new administration in place, new secret memorandums penned by Yoo and others being made public and with Yoo facing a lawsuit over his writings, legal experts and policy makers are wondering what — if anything — should be done to address the situation.

Some scholars, like NYU’s Stephen Gillers, would like to see Yoo and others held accountable. "I think the legal profession in the United States has been seriously hurt by their conduct," he said.

That said, AG Eric Holder hasn’t signaled a willingness to look into the matter. And other scholars say there is little precedent for punishing government lawyers who blessed conduct that most mainstream legal scholars contend was, in fact, illegal. Columbia’s Daniel Richman, said any punishment is unlikely unless proof turns up that they blatantly altered their legal conclusions to fit a policy agenda.

Yoo declined to comment. But in a recent WSJ opinion piece, he defended his recently disclosed work and warned that the Obama administration risked harming national security if it punished lawyers like himself.

Still, the Times notes, “the most likely consequence may be wariness from potential employers.” Former AG, Alberto R. Gonzales, for example, has not found a job since resigning in 2007 amid accusations that he misled Congress about surveillance without warrants and the firing of United States attorneys. David S. Addington, a top aide to Vice President Dick Cheney who was a forceful voice in internal legal debates, is also said to still be looking for work.

LB Readers, what do you think? Should the Obama DOJ be taking a harder line with former DOJ lawyers, like Yoo?

Full post as published by Law Blog - WSJ.com on March 09, 2009 (boomark / email).