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Prof. Martin S. Lederman Esq.


Self Description

Third-Party Descriptions

April 2008: "Martin S. Lederman, a former lawyer with the Office of Legal Counsel who now teaches law at Georgetown University, said the Yoo memo helped create a legal environment that allowed prisoner abuses at Abu Ghraib."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/04/01/AR2008040102213.html

February 2008: 'Martin S. Lederman, a former Office of Legal Counsel official who teaches law at Georgetown University, called Bradbury's testimony "chilling." In an online posting, Lederman said that "to say that this is not severe physical suffering -- is not torture -- is absurd. And to invoke the defense that what the Spanish Inquisition did was worse and that we use a more benign, non-torture form of waterboarding . . . is obscene."'

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/02/16/AR2008021602634.html

January 2008: 'Martin S. Lederman, a former Justice Department official who teaches law at Georgetown University, said Mukasey's carefully worded testimony strongly suggests he agrees with earlier Justice Department decisions that waterboarding and other harsh techniques are indeed legal. "It means they don't think it's torture," Lederman said. Lederman also challenged Mukasey's assertion that it is best not to make a clear public statement about the meaning of U.S. laws.'

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/01/30/AR2008013001654.html

Relationships

RoleNameTypeLast Updated
Employee/Freelancer/Contractor (past or present) Georgetown University Organization Jan 31, 2008
Organization Executive (past or present) Justice Department/Department of Justice (DOJ) Organization Jan 31, 2008

Articles and Resources

Date Fairness.com Resource Read it at:
Apr 02, 2008 Memo: Laws Didn't Apply to Interrogators: Justice Dept. Official in 2003 Said President's Wartime Authority Trumped Many Statutes

QUOTE: "If a government defendant were to harm an enemy combatant during an interrogation in a manner that might arguably violate a criminal prohibition, he would be doing so in order to prevent further attacks on the United States by the al Qaeda terrorist network," [John C.] Yoo wrote. "In that case, we believe that he could argue that the executive branch's constitutional authority to protect the nation from attack justified his actions."

 Washington Post
Apr 02, 2008 Yoo Talkin' to Me? Plausible deniability, and other reasons why warfare by midlevel legal memoranda is a really bad idea.

QUOTE: What's going to happen to John Yoo is pretty much what has happened to every other lawyer who ever offered a plausible-sounding legal opinion about how to break the laws in pursuing the war on terror. Nothing. He was just doing his job. The worst thing that will happen to Yoo may be that he has to teach the dreaded 8:30 a.m. Friday class at Berkeley next year. It's the lawyers who wrote the "no" memos who lost their jobs.

 Slate
Feb 17, 2008 Justice Official Defends Rough CIA Interrogations: Severe, Lasting Pain Is Torture, He Says

QUOTE: In testimony before a House subcommittee...the acting chief of the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel, spelled out how the administration regulated the CIA's use of rough tactics and offered new details of how simulated drowning was used to compel disclosures by prisoners suspected of being al-Qaeda members.

 Washington Post
Jan 30, 2008 Mukasey Hints at Wider CIA Probe

QUOTE: [New] testimony [from Attorney General Michael B. Mukasey ] indicated that the CIA tapes probe, which Mukasey launched earlier this month, could go beyond the tape destruction itself to examine the actions of the current and former CIA employees who carried out coercive interrogations.

 Washington Post