One of the characteristics of the US is that they take good things to excess - witness their presidential election process, or the 37 different varieties of salad dressing offered in a deli. At present, they are taking another good thing to excess: arguing over the role of lawyers in the torture scandals which have broken out on both sides of the Atlantic.It is good that lawyers’ roles are being discussed openly and as a priority, since it is lawyers who have presumably signed off on what is permissible in the treatment of suspects. The two principal targets of torture opponents in the US are John Yoo and Jay Bybee, who were Justice Department lawyers during the Bush years and wrote opinions authorising what are euphemistically called ‘enhanced interrogation techniques’. John Yoo has attracted the most opprobrium because he refuses to back down – he continues to justify loudly what he did. Jay Bybee was his boss, and has been appointed a federal judge. He doesn’t comment, and is said to regret now the opinions that he signed then.

You can entertain yourself on the internet finding out how the two are being pursued by those who think they should be fired (John Yoo is now a professor of law at the University of California, Berkeley) or impeached – or indeed supported. The Justice Department’s own Office of Professional Responsibility recently issued a report, saying in effect that the advice was sometimes significantly flawed and showed poor judgement, but that the two should not be referred to their bars for unprofessional conduct. The mainstream press, not just the legal journals, has discussed these issues in the liveliest and most informative manner.

Of course, the left has led the charge against these lawyers. Last week, the right fired back. Dick Cheney’s daughter’s organisation, Keep America Safe, has targeted lawyers now working in the Justice Department who have in the past represented Guantanamo detainees, asking ‘whose values do they share?’ The New York Times editorialised as a result on how wrong it is that lawyers should be identified with their clients (but why then did they call for Jay Bybee to be impeached for signing off on a so-called torture memo?).

These debates raise fundamental issues about the role of lawyers. What is the borderline between bad legal advice and unprofessional conduct? Must you knowingly provide false advice? Recklessly? Is it enough to save you if you sincerely believe the most foolish and unlawful things to be true and lawful? Is it the procedures you use in coming to the wrong legal advice which should be considered when coming to a conclusion about unprofessional conduct, or the substance of the advice itself?

You might see where I am leading. We in the UK have similar scandals. An MI5 officer reported that a British resident had been abused, and was advised that, since the prisoner was in US custody, he need take no action to intervene. There is a continuing fuss about the advice that the attorney general during the Iraq War, Lord Goldsmith, gave in relation to Iraqis detained by UK soldiers. Yet we have no similar debate in the UK about the role of lawyers and their advice in the post-9/11 climate. I want the good – a debate about the role of lawyers, and the location of the border-line between legal advice and unprofessional behaviour; but not the excess – where lawyers become political footballs between rival groupings, so that the advice that favours a particular line is legitimate but the advice against is unprofessional conduct.

Amnesty International has called for an inquiry into the UK’s alleged involvement in human rights abuses like rendition, secret detention and torture, and I support that.

These sorts of debates are good for lawyers, and for highlighting our role in society. I hope they might provide guidance to lawyers for the future. It would be best to begin the debate now among ourselves, so that - if it becomes a wider public discussion - we are ready with some of the answers. Legal advice is, of course, confidential and not usually made public. Normally, I would argue strongly for the preservation of lawyer-client secrecy. But in the US the advice has been published, so that a wider debate could take place on the question of torture and the public interest. Is it not time for such advice to be published here, too?

Jonathan Goldsmith is the secretary general of the Council of Bars and Law Societies of Europe, which represents around a million European lawyers through its member bars and law societies