Court of Appeals holds John Yoo is immune from liability for his role in justifying torture

The Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit has just issued an opinion holding that John Yoo is immune from a lawsuit by a U.S. citizen who said he was tortured while detained in a military brig.  Yoo, as I am sure you remember, was one of the lawyers who designed the arguments used by the Bush administration to support the legality of its use of torture.  The opinion of the court is available here.

 For more on the story go to the blog of the Supreme Court, The Wall Street Journal law blog, Legal Ethics Forum and the New York Times.

A more interesting question that is not addressed by this case, though, is whether Yoo's conduct was unethical.  There has been a lot of discussion (and there is a lot of literature about it out there) already.

For a great discussion of the story on the role of the attorneys in the Bush administration you should watch the show "Cheney's Law" which is available here, particularly starting with chapter 4, which starts about 25 minutes into the show.  Here are chapters 4, 5, 6 and 7 :

Watch Cheney's Law on PBS. See more from FRONTLINE.

Watch Cheney's Law on PBS. See more from FRONTLINE.

Watch Cheney's Law on PBS. See more from FRONTLINE.

Watch Cheney's Law on PBS. See more from FRONTLINE.