BUILDING A BRIEF FOR MASS INDICTMENTS
War Crimes Start at the Top
Professor John Yoo Should be Dismissed From Boalt Law School–And Prosecuted
By CARLOS VILLARREAL
War crimes start at the top. The torture and deaths at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo; the humiliation of Iraqi and Afghani detainees in the field; extraordinary rendition; the indiscriminate killing by rifles and cluster bombs; these are becoming the new norms of war for which the leaders in the United States are responsible. And as with the war crimes of the past, the spilling of blood began with the spilling of ink. The most culpable are not the young foot soldiers in fatigues holding a naked prisoner with a dog leash; they are the men and women in suits who craft the policies.
John Yoo is one of those men in suits, and it is disgraceful that he is paid by the people of California to shape the law and young minds at one of our most distinguished law schools. As an organization, the National Lawyers Guild released a press release in April stating that Yoo ought to be tried as a war criminal and dismissed by the University of California Berkeley - Boalt Hall, where he is currently a law professor.
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There is precedent for criminal liability against attorneys in circumstances not unlike the Yoo case. Philippe Sands, among others, has recently revisited the Nuremberg case of United States v. Altstoetter in a scathing two-part story in Vanity Fair called “The Green Light.” Sands writes that the case “had been prosecuted by the Allies to establish the principle that lawyers and judges in the Nazi regime bore a particular responsibility for the regime’s crimes.” The principal defendant in that case was imprisoned for five years, primarily for performing as an attorney - giving legal advice (or more accurately legal cover) for the “disappearing” of political opponents of the Nazi regime.
John Yoo created a legal framework that would allow torture; and just like the lawyerly work that led to convictions in Altstoetter, it wasn’t done as a purely academic or philosophical exercise. He created this framework to enable torturers; to give cover and help set in motion policies that would directly lead to the pain, suffering and death of prisoners held by the United States against accepted international law. This is why Yoo ought to be dismissed by Boalt, disbarred, and prosecuted for war crimes.
only five years for Yoo? That’s a slap on the wrist! And, speaking of war criminals:
…Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia has publicly claimed that the torture of prisoners does not violate the Eighth Amendment’s ban on “cruel and unusual punishment.” Scalia’s comment came during an interview with Lesley Stahl on CBS’s 60 Minutes.
Justice Scalia: I don’t like torture. I’m—although defining it is going to be a nice trick. But, I mean, who’s in favor of it? Nobody. And we have a law against torture. But if the—everything that is hateful and odious is not covered by some provision of the Constitution.
Lesley Stahl: If someone’s in custody, as in Abu Ghraib, and they are brutalized by a law enforcement person, if you listen to the expression, ‘cruel and unusual punishment,’ doesn’t that apply?
Justice Scalia: “No, no.”
more on the American legal climate:
Lawyers fear feds eavesdrop on talks with terror suspects
The New York Times
PORTLAND — Thomas Nelson, an Oregon lawyer, has lived in a state of perpetual jet lag for two years. Every few weeks, he flies from Portland to the Middle East to meet with a high-profile Saudi client who cannot enter the United States because he faces charges here of financing terrorism.
Nelson says he does not dare to phone this client or e-mail him because of what many prominent criminal-defense lawyers say is a well-founded fear that all of their contacts are being monitored by the U.S. government.
Because he is constantly shifting time zones to see his client face to face, “I just don’t sleep normally anymore,” Nelson said. “But I don’t have a choice. It’s very clear to me that anything I say to my client or to other lawyers in this case is being recorded.”
guilty until proven guilty, eh?
