Fire John Yoo
The torture architect has made Berkeley Law an institute of injustice
In a 2005 debate, law professor Doug Cassel asked John Yoo the following question:
If the president deems that he’s got to torture somebody, including by crushing the testicles of the person’s child, there is no law that can stop him?
Yoo’s response? “No treaty.”
Also in 2005, Anne-Marie Slaughter, dean of Princeton’s Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, asked Yoo the following question:
… you are telling me that you would tell your client, the president of the United States, ‘You may order pulling out somebody’s fingernails. You may order having somebody’s family member killed in front of them to extract information.’. . . Are you really saying that our Constitution allows a president to do that?
Yoo’s response was even more inhumane and terrifying than his response to Cassel’s question:
Is there any provision that prevents him from doing that?
John Yoo has spent his career making a mockery of American justice and the rule of law. He has asserted that torture is legal, that mass surveillance of American citizens on American soil without a warrant was justified, and he is a proponent of the Unitary Executive Theory which essentially makes the president a dictator during times of war.
In 2009, the Justice Department’s Office of Professional Responsibility concluded Yoo had “committed intentional professional misconduct.” Just last year, Yoo went on Fox News and smeared Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, a decorated war hero who had the courage to testify before Congress. Yoo intimated in no uncertain terms that Lt. Col. Vindman was committing espionage against the United States.
In a just society, Yoo would be put on trial for war crimes. Instead, to this day he enjoys a comfortable life as the Emanuel S. Heller Professor of Law at UC Berkeley. His gross, self-serving interpretation of the law did not give Berkeley a second’s pause in their decision to offer him a job. His disgusting insinuations against a war hero did not result in the slightest disciplinary action from Berkeley.
Yoo has taken it a step further. In an article for the National Review (which I will not link to because that disreputable publication does not deserve the traffic), he claimed the Supreme Court’s recent DACA ruling essentially gives the president the authority to circumvent Congress. This interpretation has been debunked by numerous constitutional scholars, including the great Laurence Tribe (whose shoes Yoo isn’t fit to lick).
But there is one person who finds Yoo’s undemocratic theories very appealing—Donald Trump. This is a president who admires authoritarian dictators like Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong-un and longs to be just like them. In a recent interview, Trump declared he would use Yoo’s interpretation over the next month on immigration and health care. In Portland, unidentified federal stormtroopers are arresting and rounding up peaceful protestors, throwing them in unmarked vans without a warrant.
And now, Yoo has confirmed that he is speaking to White House officials about his opinion of the SCOTUS ruling. Donald Trump and John Yoo are a match made in Hell, and the two of them working in concert with Attorney General William Barr and DHS acting director Chad Wolf poses an extreme danger to the rule of law.
UC Berkeley has ignored Yoo’s indecent abuse of the law for far too long. If Berkeley truly believes itself to be a defender of justice, then John Yoo must be dismissed immediately for professional misconduct. Any institution that employs this lunatic authoritarian has no respect for the law, no respect for justice, and certainly no respect for the Constitution.
