The idea of prosecuting a lawyer because a wrote a legal analysis with which the current Attorney General disagrees is so outrageous that I can't believe it would be seriously considered.When some non-lawyer know-nothing blogger like me can quickly see through a Harvard grad law professor's B.S. legalese, it probably isn't a good sign, but here goes:
If you are a lawyer, and your client comes to you and tells you that he wants you to write a memo explaining to him why it is legal for him to murder his wife, and you write that memo... and then that client goes out and murders his wife, it is highly possible that you, as the lawyer, might have done something wrong. I have no idea what the exact charges might be... maybe malpractice? But given the circumstances...
So, if you are a lawyer who writes a memo explaining how it is legal for people to torture a prisoner, and then those people go out and torture that prisoner, breaking the law... it's the same flavor of oops.
1 comment:
Yes, TMF: I came to a similar conclusion. If nothing else, professional ethics were certainly trampled upon.
This would fall under the same category of crime as hiring a hit man: Law-breaking by proxy. Just instead of seeking out somebody and paying them to commit crime, somebody sought you out and you gave them permission to commit crime. It's not the same as hiring a hit man, which would be the next more-severe level in law-breaking-by-proxy. So I'm not sure what the charges would be... but just as doctors can be charged with criminal negligence, I assume lawyers can as well.
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