John Yoo Torture Memo | Salon - The Diigo Meta page

• 10 Mar 09
  

  Tom Caswelch
  • popped up
• 

  Chris Lott

  Yoo's corrupt opinions are a black mark on the history of American law. They are certain to take their place with the rulings generally considered to be the worst in U.S. history: Dred Scott v. Sandford (which found slavery constitutional), Plessy v. Ferguson (which upheld racial segregation and the "separate but equal" doctrine), Korematsu v. United States (which upheld the incarceration of 110,000 innocent Japanese-Americans during WWII) and Bush v. Gore (in which right-wing justices used an absurd equal-protection argument to hand the presidency to their favored candidate).
  
  In the end, what condemns Yoo most is his arrogant and dismissive attitude toward the law itself -- its logic, its precedents, its purpose. For Yoo, the law is simply a tool to be used to hand power to an omnipotent executive branch, and we must trust in the good faith of that executive branch to use its extra-legal powers properly. This view is the antithesis of both jurisprudence and the American system of government. The law is the last majestic bulwark against the tyranny of men. But in the hands of debased functionaries like Yoo, that great bulwark was eroded.

  pollinks politics justice history

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