Boo! DoJ Rules, Law Open To Context Of Times

[Procrustes Stretched]

Are we always a nation of laws, or are we a nation of laws depending on the context of the times in which the law is being interpreted?

For me the above are rhetorical questions, since I aready have an opinion on the matter. I am wondering what others think.

Below is an example of a decision the Department of Justice has just handed down about lawyers in it's own dept.

According to the DoJ Office of Professional Responsibility (OPR/ethics office), two lawyers...

... had demonstrated "professional misconduct."
... had ignored legal precedents and provided slipshod legal advice ... in possible violation of international and federal laws

but yet another...... career lawyer at the Justice Department, rejected that conclusion ...said the ethics lawyers, in condemning the lawyers' actions, had given short shrift to..."Among the difficulties in assessing... years after... is that the context is lost,"

-NYT

 

[Procrustes Stretched]

Are we always a nation of laws, or are we a nation of laws depending on the context of the times in which the law is being interpreted?

For me the above are rhetorical questions, since I aready have an opinion on the matter. I am wondering what others think.

Below is an example of a decision the Department of Justice has just handed down about lawyers in it's own dept.

According to the DoJ Office of Professional Responsibility (OPR/ethics office), two lawyers...

... had demonstrated "professional misconduct."
... had ignored legal precedents and provided slipshod legal advice ... in possible violation of international and federal laws

but yet another...... career lawyer at the Justice Department, rejected that conclusion ...said the ethics lawyers, in condemning the lawyers' actions, had given short shrift to..."Among the difficulties in assessing... years after... is that the context is lost,"

-NYT

Oh, did I forget to mention the context of the isuue at hand?

The ethics lawyers, in the Office of Professional Responsibility, concluded that two department lawyers involved in analyzing and justifying waterboarding and other interrogation tactics - Jay S. Bybee, now a federal judge, and John C. Yoo, now a professor at the University of California, Berkeley - had demonstrated "professional misconduct."

It said the lawyers had ignored legal precedents and provided slipshod legal advice to the White House in possible violation of international and federal laws on torture. That report was among the documents made public Friday.

But David Margolis, a career lawyer at the Justice Department, rejected that conclusion...

 

[Procrustes Stretched]

hmmm, it appears that...

Report Faults 2 Authors of Bush Terror Memos


By ERIC LICHTBLAU and SCOTT SHANE
Published: February 19, 2010

WASHINGTON — After five years of often bitter internal debate, the Justice Department concluded in a report released Friday that the lawyers who gave legal justification to the Bush administration’s brutal interrogation tactics for terrorism suspects used flawed legal reasoning but were not guilty of professional misconduct.

The report, rejecting harsher sanctions recommended by Justice Department ethics lawyers, brings to a close a pivotal chapter in the debate over the legal limits of the Bush administration’s fight against terrorism and whether its treatment of Qaeda prisoners amounted to torture

Divisions Arose on Rough Tactics for Qaeda Figure


By SCOTT SHANE
Published: April 17, 2009

WASHINGTON — The first use of waterboarding and other rough treatment against a prisoner from Al Qaeda was ordered by senior Central Intelligence Agency officials despite the belief of interrogators that the prisoner had already told them all he knew, according to former intelligence officials and a footnote in a newly released legal memorandum.