Protesting the government's misuse of law

By Joseph E. Kennedy
Published: Sun, May. 10, 2009 02:00AM
Modified Fri, May. 08, 2009 05:01PM

CHAPEL HILL -- Today Nobel Laureate Bishop Desmond Tutu will speak at the UNC-Chapel Hill commencement, and former U.S. Attorney General Michael Mukasey will speak at the separate commencement ceremony of UNC's School of Law. For me, these two addresses will have a special connection because a conversation I once had with Bishop Tutu is part of the reason I will be wearing an orange armband protesting Judge Mukasey's selection ...

In December of last year Mukasey stated that there was no legal basis for prosecuting the Justice Department lawyers who authored the torture memoranda because they were trying to protect national security and believed that they were acting lawfully. Yet the torture memoranda that the department authored under the Bush administration twisted the interpretation of existing legal authorities beyond any reasonable understanding ...

Such reasoning would receive an F grade if offered by a first-year law student. When offered by the head of the elite Office of Legal Counsel it must be seen for what it was: a lie about the meaning of the law, not a mistake ...

As a lawyer and a law professor, I like to believe that a big part of what has always given this country a special place in the hearts and minds of many oppressed peoples in faraway lands is the role that the rule of law often plays in our very best moments as a people. I think that both the image and the reality of that role are very much at stake in the current controversy about torture, and I think Tutu would agree. The Truth and Reconciliation process he oversaw in South Africa offered leniency to those who thought they were justified in what they did but only after establishing what wrong had been done ...

http://www.newsobserver.com/opinion/columns/story/1519659.html