Yoo And The Law

San Francisco - John Yoo now teaches at Berkeley Law School. If you haven't read Professor Yoo's most recently-unearthed memo please do. It is a classic.

With Abbott and Costello reasoning it lays out a legal argument that runs "The president says you are an enemy combatant. Enemy combatants are guilty because the president says so; therefore you are guilty because the president says you are an enemy combatant."

This is the same sort of reasoning as "Socrates is mortal; all men are mortal; therefore Socrates is a man." Except that, based on this same reasoning, Socrates could also be a parakeet because parakeets are mortal too.

Oh, and "the president says you are an enemy combatant" part? It applies to American citizens on American soil.

Yoo goes on to construct an elaborate legal scaffolding that claims there is a pressing need to torture anyone unlucky enough to fall into American hands.

Yoo's memo is more than a twisted apology for torture. Yoo's memo is a blueprint for running a systematic program of institutionalized torture.

Himmler would be proud.

And now, Yoo, at a prestigious law school, teaches other people how to be lawyers, having been offered this position of honor and influence being based on his sterling accomplishments in subverting the law.

Yoo teaching law at Berkeley is like Himmler teaching marketing at Harvard.

Here is some contact info, just in case you feel like making your displeasure known:

Christopher Edley, Jr
Dean of Law
edley@law.berkeley.edu
University of California,
Berkeley School of Law
215 Boalt Hall
Berkeley, CA 94720
Phone: 510-642-6483
Fax: 510-642-9893

John Choon Yoo
Professor of Law
Office: 890 Simon Hall
Berkeley, CA 94720
Tel: 510-643-5089
Fax: 510-642-3728
jyoo@law.berkeley.edu
John C. Yoo's Website