There's a particularly interesting angle to the Jose Padilla lawsuit my co-blogger Jonathan Adler discusses below: Yale Law School's International Human Rights Law Clinic (representing Padilla) is bringing the suit against a Yale Law School graduate (Yoo '92), for providing bad legal advice.

  Based on the complaint, I don't think Yale Law School ends up looking very good on either side of this one. Yoo's legal analysis was very weak, for reasons we have explored at length here. But I don't think the Yale Law clinic has a strong legal footing, either. First, there's an interesting question whether Yoo would be entitled to absolute immunity or only qualified immunity for the legal opinions he drafted at OLC. My quick look at the cases suggests there's no clear answer to that.

  Second, while I am no expert in civil tort actions, I would think there is a significant problem with causation. As I understand it, the claim against Yoo is that he adopted legal positions in memos that permitted others to perform acts that violated Padilla's rights. I would think that is too far removed to satisfy the causation requirement for a civil tort action.

  UPDATE: Duncan Hollis has some interesting throughts on the case at Opinio Juris.