Posted on 04/25/2008 10:36:59 AM PDT by The_Republican
Lynching lawyers, as Shakespeare once suggested, has never appealed much to the legal profession itself – literally or figuratively. But an exception apparently will be made for a group of attorneys who advised President Bush and his national security staff in the aftermath of 9/11. They've been subject to an increasingly determined campaign of public obloquy by law professors, activist lawyers and pundits.
Their legal competence and ethics have been questioned. Suggestions have even been made that they can and should be held criminally responsible for "war crimes," because their legal advice supposedly led to detainee abuses at Abu Ghraib and elsewhere.
The targets of this witch hunt include some of the country's finest legal minds – such as law Prof. John Yoo of the University of California at Berkeley, Judge Jay Bybee of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, and William J. (Jim) Haynes II, former Pentagon general counsel. Others frequently mentioned include former White House Counsel Harriet Miers, former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, and former Undersecretary of Defense Douglas Feith.
Many positions taken by these attorneys, laying the fundamental legal architecture of the war on terror, outrage international activists and legal specialists. Nevertheless, in a series of cases beginning with Hamdi v. Rumsfeld (2004), the U.S. Supreme Court has upheld many of their key positions: that the country is engaged in an armed conflict; that captured enemy combatants can be detained without criminal trial during these hostilities; and that (when the time comes) they may be punished through the military, rather than the civilian, justice system.
The Court has also required that detainees be given an administrative hearing to challenge their enemy-combatant classification, ruled that Congress (not the president alone) must establish any military commission system, and made clear that it will in the future exercise some.....
(Excerpt) Read more at online.wsj.com ...
thank you for that observation about shakespeare. It’s as mangled as the idea of ‘separate of church and state’.
And a big Hoo Ahh to the authors. Nice to see somebody standing up for the good guys who risk their professional careers in a time of war.
It is is you listen to the drug dealers and users rant about "lost freedoms". Some quite eloquently I might add. The only self-serving quotes I have not seen yet are from the bible.
Just saying...
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.