Legal News

Jose Padilla, Meet John Yoo: Judge Clears Path for Lawsuit

By Ashby Jones

It’s a decision, we imagine, that’s going to split LB readers down the middle. On Friday, Jeffrey White, a federal district court judge in San Francisco, ruled that Jose Padilla — a convicted terrorist — can haul Berkeley professor and Bush administration lawyer John Yoo into court. The allegation: that Yoo helping draft the legal theories that led to his alleged torture.

The order by Judge Jeffrey White of San Francisco, a Bush appointee, is the first time a government lawyer has been held potentially liable for the abuse of detainees. Click here for the NYT story; here for the AP story; here for the ruling.

White ruled Padilla, who is serving a 17-year sentence on terror charges, may be able to prove that Yoo’s memos “set in motion a series of events that resulted in the deprivation of Padilla’s constitutional rights.” Added White: “Like any other government official, government lawyers are responsible for the foreseeable consequences of their conduct.”

White ruled that Yoo went beyond the normal role of an attorney when he helped write the Bush administration’s detention and torture policies, then drafted legal opinions to justify those policies.

Yoo’s recently released 2001 memo advised that the military could use “any means necessary” to hold terror suspects. A 2002 memo to then-White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales advised that treatment of suspected terrorists was torture only if it caused pain levels equivalent to “organ failure, impairment of bodily function or even death.” Yoo also advised that the president might have the constitutional power to allow torturing enemy combatants.

The ruling rejected the government’s arguments that the courts are barred from examining top-level administration decisions in wartime, or that airing “allegations of unconstitutional treatment of an American citizen on American soil” would damage national security or foreign relations.

Yoo was not reached by the reporters; the DOJ declined to comment to the NYT. LB readers will be interested to know, we’re sure, that the Lowenstein International Human Rights Clinic at Yale Law is repping Padilla. Said Tahlia Townsend, an attorney there: “It’s a really significant victory for accountability and our constitutional system of checks and balances.”

Full post as published by Law Blog - WSJ.com on June 15, 2009 (boomark / email).