After watching Bill Moyers' Journal last night on PBS and again seeing the clear record of deception and dissembling by the Bush White House lawyers, particularly that by John Yoo, I called my ninety year old mom and we shared our thoughts about Watergate. "If the President does it, that means it's not illegal".
That's what Yoo was saying in those memos. I think this is legal misconduct comparable to scientific misconduct. See discussion below.
Anyway, as a graduate of University of Texas Law School, I am familiar with the situation of having some controversial faculty. One of Nixon's lawyers was a long-time professor there. And he was actually a first-rate guy; I wish Nixon had put him on the Supreme Court, though I am of course very happy with Ford's appointment of Stevens.
What I am wondering is if there are UCB alumni out there campaigning to oust Yoo. If he were at my alma mater, I would be contacting fellow alumni to tell the school that no more contributions would be forthcoming until there is at least an inquiry.
In the field of science, what is called "scientific misconduct" is a serious charge. The basics are what we call FFP, "fabrication, falsification, and plagiarism". When scientists fabricate results, or falsify data,and publish those data, that leads to serious consequences, in that other scientists rely on the data and may well be led down "rabbit trails" that are based on invalid findings. Government grants may involved and the scientist who is misleading his or her colleagues or those who have been misled may be wasting not only their time, but also public money. Worse, solutions to scientific and medical problems may be compromised and real people suffer. Think of the kid who is suffering from cancer and is treated with an ineffective regime that is based in part on false data.
Plagiarism, in my view, is less serious, even in science. Some may recall that there was a dispute about who discovered HIV as the cause of AIDS. But did that cause any compromise in the efforts to combat the disease? And outside the field of science, there are many well respected writers who have been found to have committed plagiarism.
So what is the concept of legal misconduct? Well, mostly it is violations of rules that apply to lawyers handling cases for their clients and who mess around with money or who fail to keep their clients advised of the status of their cases. My experience is that the vast majority of cases where lawyers are disciplined are cases where a lawyer represents a client and fails to handle money properly or fails to keep a client informed and the client's claim is adversely affected. Such things can lead to disbarment over fairly trivial sums and cases that could be resolved.
So what if a lawyer, based on shaky or selective research, advises the government that conduct that has been repeatedly considered to be torture is not illegal?
And keep in mind that this was not a situation where the lawyer or lawyers in question were in an adversarial situation such that their contentions would be tested in a court hearing. I regularly get motions and pleadings from my opponents that misstate the law, but I have the opportunity to challenge them before the judge. This situation was way more like Enron, where lawyers blessed their clients' schemes, so they could go forward with questionable or illegal practices.
We prosecuted lawyers and judges from the Third Reich and we did not accept the "just following orders" defense after World War II.
California is the "recall" state. It is in financial trouble. I have nothing against UCB--I did not even apply to the school, though maybe I should have. It just seems obvious to me that Yoo needs to go.
Back to misconduct: The University of Colorado tried to throw out Ward Churchill for basically minor plagiarism, as I understand it. I think Yoo's conduct is WAY worse than that of Churchill.