Obama's Injustice Department

The Weekly Standard ^ | 05/25/2009 | Michael Stokes Paulsen

[astyanax]

Government lawyers in the Department of Justice's Office of Professional Responsibility (OPR) appear to have leaked to the press parts of a confidential--and classified--draft report concerning the actions of Bush administration lawyers. The report calls for state bar associations to investigate, and perhaps discipline, attorneys who provided sensitive legal advice to President Bush's administration concerning the legal limits of coercive interrogation methods against high-level al Qaeda terrorists. That advice was, of course, controversial. It is now, in the current political climate, highly unpopular in certain circles. OPR has determined, apparently, that it was "unethical" to give it and that the lawyers involved should be punished.

How many things are wrong with this picture? From the perspective of legal ethics, constitutional law, and good government, I count at least five big problems.

1. The leak itself:

[astyanax]

Unethical leaks and confidentiality violations; outsourcing federal responsibilities; basic misunderstandings of legal ethics principles; incompetent analysis of constitutional, international, treaty, and statutory law. What more could be wrong with an ethics office's actions? It is hard to know for sure--without seeing OPR's report--the full extent to which it contains all of these problems. But leaked accounts of the OPR's draft report so far call that office's ethics and professionalism into question more than they do those of anyone else.

[Mercat]

It’s also black letter ethics law in my state and I assume in all states and the district that you don’t tell anyone about information in an ethics investigation unless or until it is published. In other words, if a lawyer gets one of those dreaded letters from the state disciplinary board, the first thing it does is refer you to the rule that says, “DON’T TALK TO ANYONE ABOUT THIS!!!!”

[nathanbedford]

Meanwhile, AP reports that an ethics complaint has been filed with the Minnesota State Bar Association ethics division against Michael Stokes Paulsen for the contents of this article.

[Iron Munro]

In four years we should clamor for the punishment of all those in the Obama administration who were complicit in the endless stream of unconstitutional programs, dictatorial directives and actions emanating from Obama and the democrat congress.

[astyanax]

“Professor Michael Paulsen is university chair and professor of law at the University of St. Thomas Law School in Minneapolis. Prior to his current position, Professor Paulsen was McKnight Presidential Professor of Law and Public Policy, Law Alumni Distinguished Professor, and Associate Dean for Faculty Research and Scholarship at the University of Minnesota Law School, where he taught for sixteen years.

Professor Paulsen was also an attorney-adviser in the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel from 1989-1991. His areas of primary legal scholarship include constitutional law, separation of powers, war, national security and the Constitution, and legal ethics and professional responsibility. The author of more than 60 academic articles in these fields, he is one of the country’s foremost constitutional scholars.”

LOL! He’d shred them!

[astyanax]

You’d think the dems would know better than to open up a can of worms like this... or not.