Jay Bybee, who wrote one of the recently released torture memos, is now a federal judge on the Court of Appeals. That’s one step below the Supreme Court, for anyone who’s counting.
Lately there has been a lot of calls for his impeachment, something he would richly deserve. Some members of Congress have even oh-so-cautiously indicated that maybe they should go there.
Whether he’s committed an impeachable offense is a good question. I don’t know if you can impeach someone for an action they took before they assumed the office in question. If so, then he would seem to warrant impeachment and conviction, since he’s guilty of war crimes. As a practical matter, it seems unlikely that a conviction would be secured, since Republicans would argue that conspiring to commit torture is not anywhere near as bad as lying about a blow job, and they would refuse to vote to convict. As we learned in the Clinton case, it takes 67 votes to convict, and this time the super-majority requirement is in the Constitution, and not in Harry Reid’s head.
There is one sanction, albeit an insufficient one, that could be imposed. Bybee is from California, and he’s on the 9th Circuit Bench, there’s a reasonably good chance that he’s a member of the California Bar. If not, he may be a member of the DC bar. Those bar associations, as well as those in a host of other states, might be inclined to take action against him. He should be disbarred. That would be an insufficient sanction to say the least, but it would at least put the legal profession on record, and it would be a humiliating blow to a federal judge.
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