More Yoo-grams
There are more fabulous legal opinions still classified: Memo On Illegal Searches Comes To Light
(CBS/AP) For at least 16 months after the Sept. 11 terror attacks in 2001, the Bush administration believed that the Constitution’s protection against unreasonable searches and seizures on U.S. soil did not apply to its efforts to protect against terrorism.
That view was expressed in a Justice Department legal memo dated Oct. 23, 2001. The administration on Wednesday stressed that it now disavows that view.
The October 2001 memo was written at the request of the White House by John Yoo, then the deputy assistant attorney general, and addressed to Alberto Gonzales, the White House counsel at the time. The administration had asked the department for an opinion on the legality of potential responses to terrorist activity.
The 37-page memo has not been released. Its existence was disclosed Tuesday in a footnote of a separate secret memo, dated March 14, 2003, released by the Pentagon in response to a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit by the American Civil Liberties Union.
“Our office recently concluded that the Fourth Amendment had no application to domestic military operations,” the footnote states, referring to a document titled “Authority for Use of Military Force to Combat Terrorist Activities Within the United States.”
John Choon Yoo, who wrote this, is now professor of Law at the Boalt Hall School of Law, University of California, Berkeley. Is this someone who should be teaching the law of the United States?
2 comments
I know a graduate of Boalt School of Law. Students at that school, which is generally acknowledged to be one of our nation’s best, are subjected to a variety of strong-willed professors, not just Yoo. Students in any school at Berkeley are far from shy. I have a feeling Yoo’s academic life is about to become very unpleasant, even aside from what the Dean may or may not do to him.
Yoo clearly understands that his name is slated for a place in the pages of history. What he fails to understand is how close it will stand to the names of Benedict Arnold, Vidkun Quisling, … etc.
It’s like having a young-earth creationist on the biology faculty. Having someone in the law faculty who doesn’t believe in the rule of law is over the top, even for UC Berkeley.