Mobs are forming outside John Yoo’s door in Berkeley. The former Justice Department lawyer and his employer, Boalt law school, are being hounded by the Left, which wants him fired and then disbarred. Of course, he is being strung up for writing the CIA interrogation memos. You remember — the ones that repeated that torture is illegal and tried to carefully circumscribe the interrogation methods that could be used. He and federal court judge Jay Bybee are the subjects of a Justice Department probe which, according to reports, will not recommend criminal prosecution but “only” referral to state bar associations. That can strip them of their law licenses.

But on what basis are these lawyers to be sent to state bar inquisitors to have their livelihoods imperiled? The Washington Post reports:

Stephen Gillers, a professor of legal ethics at New York University, said state bars have no subpoena power to compel the Justice Department to make sensitive documents or key witnesses available.

The core question, Gillers said, is whether state lawyers could prove that Yoo and Bybee ran afoul of professional rules.

“The only theory on which [a case] could proceed would be if lawyers violated their duty to a client . . . by giving the White House an opinion in which they did not actually believe,” Gillers said.

Veterans of state bar offices said the organizations tend to move slowly because they are strapped for resources and are overwhelmed by cases in which lawyers failed to appear in court or absconded with clients’ funds.

So these two lawyers — for whom there is no basis for criminal prosecution, about whom there is no complaint from former Bush administration officials, and for whom there is virtually no chance of an adverse result — are going to spend months and years and thousands of dollars defending themselves in non-public proceedings. We’ll be treated to leaks and speculations, but won’t have the benefit of seeing Yoo and Bybee defend themselves against the spurious complaints. And what cannon of legal ethics allows the Justice Department lawyers to file bar complaints, the only result of which will be to burden the state bars and harass the defendants? If a Republican is elected in 2012, does the next administration file complaints against the group of Obama lawyers who recommended what the new administration may think were frivolous bar complaints? Or if a more liberal administration takes over they might go after the Obama lawyers for blowing the statute of limitations (clear malpractice if you think there is a valid ethics complaint) on Yoo’s state bar inquiry. Really, it never ends.

Meanwhile the mobs gather. The Left is threatening to impeach Bybee. (A public trial in the Senate presided over by Chief Justice Roberts would be educational.) I wonder whether the president, who fancies himself a constitutional scholar, thinks this is how the rule of law and a civilized society should operate. I suppose we’ll find out soon enough.