Some more on the torture memos

At Balkinization, Marty Lederman writes on the torture memos in the capacity of law prof, and sees a potential "silver lining" to the memos. It requires real interest in the various memos that came from this administration, but worth a scan at the very least.

Fortunately, a recent document disclosure provides an opportunity to break on a positive note. Those documents provide reason to think that perhaps OLC's institutional reversal began one year earlier than the December 2004 Levin torture memo -- in December 2003, even prior to the revelation of the Abu Ghraib photos -- when OLC repudiated yet another, even more far-reaching, memo in which the office had authorized legally dubious forms of interrogation. Moreover, the new documents suggest that the repudiation of OLC's conclusions might have been triggered by something as simple as a change in personnel at OLC -- namely, the October 2003 confirmation of Jack Goldsmith to be the head of the office.