Posted by Jonathan Adler:
Obama Administration Attorneys Defend John Yoo:
http://volokh.com/archives/archive_2009_01_25-2009_01_31.shtml#1233275007
The Politico [1]reports that Justice Department attorneys are
defending John Yoo and other former Bush Administration officials in
civil suits filed by Jose Padilla and other former detainees.
Next week, Justice Department lawyers are set to ask a San
Francisco federal judge to throw out a lawsuit brought against Yoo
by Jose Padilla, a New York man held without charges on suspicion
of being an Al Qaeda operative plotting to set off a �dirty bomb.�
The suit contends that Yoo�s legal opinions authorized Bush to
order Padilla�s detention in a Navy brig in South Carolina and
encouraged military officials to subject Padilla to aggressive
interrogation techniques, including death threats and long-term
sensory deprivation.
That�s not all. On Thursday, Justice Department lawyers are slated
to be in Charleston, S.C., to ask a federal magistrate there to
dismiss another lawsuit charging about a dozen current and former
government officials with violating Padilla�s rights in connection
with his unusual detention on U.S. soil, without charges or a
trial.
The defendants in that case are like a who�s who of Bush
administration boogeymen to Obama�s liberal followers � former
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, his deputy Paul Wolfowitz and
former Attorney General John Ashcroft.
The story notes the irony that Obama Administration appointees,
potentially including some who have been quite critical of Yoo and
other architects of the Bush Administration's counter-terror policies,
could have to help defend the former Bushies in federal court. Yet, as
the story notes, this situation could also raise a potential conflict
of interest.
A leading authority on legal ethics, Stephen Gillers, said the
incoming officials� criticism of the former Bush officials has been
so withering that they should press to be defended by their own
lawyers � at government expense.
�If I were counseling Yoo or Rumsfeld, I would certainly advise
them to have private counsel or shadow counsel,� Gillers said. �The
defense has to be put in the hands of people who have not been
vocal in condemning Rumsfeld and Yoo and who have not taken a
public position on the legality of their conduct.�
References
1. http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0109/18063.html
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