Saturday, February 20, 2010

Torture memos: House Judiciary Committte - resources



Here is the webpage of the House Judiciary Committee which has links to the Office of Prfessional Responsibility Report which concludes that John Yoo committed Professional Misconduct and the memo by the Deputy Assistant Attorney General overruling that conclusion.


Rep. John Conyers, Committte Chairman, wrote:

"For years, those who approved torture and abuse of detainees have hidden behind legal memos issued by the Department of Justice’s Office of Legal Counsel," Conyers said. "The materials released today make plain that those memos were leglly flawed and fundamentally unsound, and may have been improperly influenced by a desire to tell the Bush White House and the CIA what it wanted to hear."
"The Office of Legal Counsel has a proud tradition of providing independent, high-quality legal advice to the executive branch," Conyers continued. "The materials released today make clear that the lawyers who wrote the torture memos did not live up that tradition. While the department ultimately concluded that the lawyers did not breach their minimum professional obligations, I certainly hold top lawyers at OLC to a higher standard than that, as all Americans should.
"Given the serious nature of the issues raised in this report, the committee intends to hold hearings on these matters in the very near future." 
 There is a tsunami of commentary, of course, but as an entry points HERE is John Steele at Legal Ethics Forum, and HERE is Brian Tamanaha at Balkinization.

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