Professor Yoo's thesis fails right out of the gate. In his enthusiasm for the government being allowed to lock people in cages without any substantive opportunity to seek a neutral review of why they're being held, he insists that all of this has something to do with the nation being at war. There is no war. The fact that the Administration and it's few admirers choose to throw the word about in describing our military activities does not make it so.

What nation-state are we fighting, Professor Yoo? Where is its capital? Who will sign the surrender documents on its behalf on the deck of a battleship? Oh wait, the President has said that won't happen. These realities mean that the Court's dissenting minority is willing to allow people to be locked away forever because the tactic of terrorism has always existed and will always exist. There will always be those who oppose the United States and who are not representatives of nation-states. As a result, Professor Yoo is essentially advocating that the United States is on a permanent war footing with the President being allowed to imprison anyone that he or she chooses.

He may argue for that, however, he's not arguing for anything that would be recognized by the framers of our Constitution.

And I think all of you who are demanding Yoo's dismissal from Berkeley should remember the principle of Academic Freedom.

The principle of academic freedom doesn't protect people who are clearly incompetent in the field that they've been hired to teach.

This isn't a matter of legal interpretation. John Yoo has repeatedly and publicly made statements that are factually incorrect about topics that are central to his field. If there was a history professor who was hired to teach 20th century history and they publicly insisted that world was at peace between the end of the Great War and the beginning of the Korean War, it wouldn't make sense to argue that they should keep their job as a matter of academic freedom.

The US already has LIMITLESS powers. This is clearly evident by anyone with an ounce of common sense. The sooner we dethrone Dictator Bush, the better off we will all be.

JT

http://www.Ultimate-Anonymity.com

I'll post the audio linky when it comes up in 90 min. or so.

I'm sure this thought has crossed some people's minds, but it just occurred to me: Yoo approves of procedures that hypothetically allow the agents of some foreign country to kidnap him, fly him to that country, label him an enemy combatant, torture him, and lock him in prison, without ever giving him the chance to object to his treatment. (This has apparently happened to some prisoners at Guantanamo, with no more evidence that they are terrorists than that Yoo himself is.) Now, why hasn't Yoo thought about this?

I understand that efforts have been made to disbar Yoo & end his tenure, but all of these efforts are external to the organizations who actually have the authority to take action. Interestingly enough, I can't find the state where Yoo is a member of the bar -- and maybe he's not. From

http://balkin.blogspot.com/2008/04/response-to-dean-edley.html

Back when I was a student at Boalt, my professors, including Yoo, always boasted how they did not take any bar exams and never would. It was, they conveyed with barely disguised disdain, just beneath them to sit for a bar exam.

They, including Yoo, always said you couldn't pay them enough to work at a law firm. It was, they conveyed with barely disguised disdain, just beneath them to have to suffer clients.

They, includig Yoo, always said, we're here to "teach you how to think like a lawyer." It was, they conveyed with barely disguised disdain, just risible how we students were clouding our legal analysis with moral judgement.

So, if you look at Yoo's memo, it makes for a brilliant answer to a final exam -- it spots all the issues, it rigorously applies IRAC, it reaches novel conclusions. HH! (that's Boalt speak for "High Honors" or "A"). AmJur! (that's Boalt speak for "American Jurispruence Award" or the highest grade for the class.)

In other words, it's a memo only a law professor (who's never practiced law) could love.

So, to the existential question, what makes a (good) lawyer? Yoo will never know.

But the point of my original post was -- none of the organizations that have the authority to take meaningful action or even issue an authoritative rebuke to John Yoo and his ideas have done so. In fact, they are either silent or cautiously supportive of him. So I guess we'll soon be hearing about the child with crushed testicles -- that's what we've come to, and neither a great university nor the national bar association will disown it.

I don't want to derail the thread into yet another side-winding discussion of Yoo's ability to keep his credentials. A bazillion pixels, and untold bandwidth have already exhausted the various positions on the matter. I leave the debate in the hands of the lawyers themselves - since they supposedly self-police - and Boalt at Berkeley. For better or worse, those two groups "own" this human being.

I can affirm that there has been some effort to determine where, precisely, Yoo has his legal affiliation. Apparently, some people were able to confirm that Yoo was a member of the PA and CA Bar Associations. At least that's what was reported in various threads, and in some personal emails to me. Campaigns were launched to persuade those Bar Associations to review Yoo's membership. They got nowhere. As far as I know, no one even got a response. The effort with Berkeley met with similar results. A commenter here even heard from one of Yoo's students. Apparently, the students themselves (as reported to me) are open to having Yoo at the head of their classroom.

Whether professors defending academic freedom, or lawyers examining complaints to the Bar Association, there is a certain amount of self-referential reflection - as in, this could be me. It's one of the vulnerabilities of self-policed professions.