Legal Scholars Assess the Torture Memos

Several legal academics, including Cass Sunstein and myself, are quoted in this New York Times article by Adam Liptak on the OLC and Defense Department torture memos. Cass, by nature a gentle soul, does not mince words here: "It's egregiously bad. It's very low level, it's very weak, embarrassingly weak, just short of reckless." John Yoo, who worked at the OLC when the memos were written, dismisses the criticisms, saying they were mostly "political rather than legal."

Beyond the simple incompetence of these memos, however, is their misunderstanding of the duties of Justice Department lawyers. The Justice Department does not represent the President. It represents the nation. The Justice Department, and particularly the OLC, is not supposed to tell the President how he can get away with whatever he wants to get away with. Rather, its job is to explain to the President how to ensure that the laws be faithfully executed, as the U.S. Constitution puts it. These memos fail that test. Indeed, they go out of their way to make questionable claims about the scope of the President's power, arguing at one point that far from having a duty to faithfully execute the laws, the President is not bound by them at all. These memos do not read as if the authors were acting as counsel for the nation. They read as if someone in the White House told them to write a memo that stretched the law as much as possible in order to conclude that the President can do whatever he wants.

These memos make bad legal arguments. But quite apart from their incompetence, they are also bad lawyering; they misunderstand the ethical role of the government lawyer.