Infamous Yoo torture memo is released

Backstory: The Bush administration yesterday released the previously classified Justice Department memo from March 14, 2003 that served as the principal legal fig leaf for US torture practices in the handling of detainees in the war on terror. Composed by John Yoo — then a staffer in the DoJ’s Office of Legal Counsel, now a professor at UC-Berkeley — the 81-page opinion boiled down to an assertion that the president has authority to flout all pertinent legal standards and treaty provisions governing treatment of prisoners off of US soil in time of war. As the Washington Post reports, a subsequent head of the Office of Legal Counsel, Jack Goldsmith, has written that this memo and an earlier iteration “stood out… [for] the unusual lack of care and sobriety in their legal analysis.”

The document: Jack Balkin (Balkinization) has posted the document in two PDF files, here: [Part I] [Part II]

A local connection: The March 2003 memo de-classified yesterday was a more expansive version of another memo written in 2002. Yoo’s co-author on the 2002 memo was Robert Delahunty, who is now a law professor at the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul. Paul Demko wrote about Delahunty’s role in City Pages in 2004.