06 Jun Kahan on Goldsmith, Yoo, and the Torture Memos
06.06.06
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Dan Kahan offered these remarks at Yale Commencement on the general topic of a Yale Law School education. In the course of those remarks he discussed two YLS alums, John Yoo and Jack Goldsmith. Comparing Yoo and Goldsmith he states, “… One bad lawyer, one good. What made the bad one bad wasn’t that he knew ‘less law.’ It was that he, unlike the good lawyer, refused to take moral responsibility when he found himself in a position where his individual actions as a lawyer were likely to have a decisive role in shaping our profession’s situation sense, thus in shaping the law itself.”
More on Kahan’s remarks from Orin Kerr here and Dan Markel here. Read the comments too, which are quite useful.
Professor Kahn’s remarks implicitly address one of the greatest delinquencies of American law schools: their inability to teach students law in the context of global opinion and not merely American-centric self-interest. This failing is in par a reflection of the lack of a spirited attention to international and comparative law. Yes, these subjects are taught, but they are taught as second rate topics often by professors who are the products of an American law schools’ deficient education. If international human rights law was a required and respected part of the American law school curriculum every lawyer would know that their is an extensive international consensus–almost unanimous in nature–that torture is prohibited in all circumstances and can never be justified. The prohibition of torture is non-derogable. Unfortunately, few law students have any idea about what his means. They have neither scoured the jurisprudence nor international opinio juris. Professor Kahn’s commencement also admits another harrowing truth about the start of professional life for the graduates of institutions as prestigious as his own. Many of them will be come leaders. They will lead our judicial and political institutions. They will lead our country, and in some cases even other countries. And most harrowing… Read more »