Huffington Post: Why Is Torture Lawyer John Yoo Still Teaching At Berkeley?

[Hissyspit]

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/barry-yourgrau/why-is-torture-lawyer-jo_b_94630.html

Barry Yourgrau

Why Is Torture Lawyer John Yoo Still Teaching at Berkeley?
Posted April 2, 2008 | 11:07 AM (EST)

John Yoo is one of the prime--if not the prime--formulators of the blatantly inadequate and outrageous legal opinions that justified the Bush administration's use of torture.

His opinions were not just idle academic theories: They helped further the actual practice of war crimes and crimes against humanity.

Why is he still allowed to teach at Berkeley? Why hasn't or doesn't the Berkeley faculty senate or law-school senate demand his dismissal? Why haven't or aren't disbarment proceedings being brought against him?

Scott Horton today quotes an article in Vanity Fair excerpted from Philippe Sands' new expose of Bush's torture lawyers:

"Addington, Bybee, Gonzales, Haynes, and Yoo became, in effect, a torture team of lawyers, freeing the administration from the constraints of all international rules prohibiting abuse."

Horton then himself writes:

"They (Yoo et al) also missed the established precedent I have cited repeatedly here, namely United States v. Altstoetter, under the rule of which the conduct of the torture lawyers is a criminal act not shielded by any notions of government immunity."

Why is Berkeley providing employment to a likely war criminal? Why aren't thousands of people gathering at the Law School, demanding Yoo's ouster?

http://www.harpers.org/archive/2008/04/hbc-90002779

The Green Light
DEPARTMENT No Comment
BY Scott Horton
PUBLISHED April 2, 2008

Yesterday the public finally got to see the full text of an infamous Department of Justice memorandum from March 2003 designed to authorize torture. I will have some more comments on this odious document authored by John Yoo, a man who (amazingly) teaches at a prominent law school. But this disclosure serves as a fitting introduction for the publication today of Philippe Sands’s article “The Green Light” in Vanity Fair. The article is a teaser for Sands’s forthcoming book, set for release later this month, The Torture Team.

We’ve all heard ad nauseam the Administration’s official torture narrative. This is a different kind of war, they argue. Each invocation of “different” is to a clear point: the Administration wishes to pursue its war unfettered by the laws of war. Unfettered, indeed, by any form or notion of law. But Sands’s work is important because he has looked carefully at the chronology: what came first, the decision to use torture techniques, or the legal rationale for them?

[izquierdista]

1. Very good questions

They should be answered in the dock in The Hague.

[SammyWinstonJack]

7. Hell will freeze over first. Oh wait........... they should be very concerned.

What with the bu$h maladministration in power. :evilgrin:

[tularetom]

2. I'm an alumnus. Next time they hit me up for a donation I'll ask 'em.

[Hissyspit]

3. I wonder what kind of questions the students ask of him?

"Professor Yoo, why don't you have a conscience?"

[EFerrari]

5. There were demonstrations there when the Torture memo hit

the press but I haven't heard anything in a long time.

[EFerrari]

4. Ditto. Torture is not an acceptable difference of opinion. n/t

[tanyev]

6. I hope he's not teaching any required courses.

I wonder what kind of enrollment he has in his classes?

[DCKit]

8. Why was he offered the position to begin with?

I don't know about you guys, but I was well aware of his stance on torture and the Constitution while he was still at the WH. When I heard Berkeley had offered him a job, I about puked.

Obviously the "good" drugs are no longer available at Berkeley.

[EFerrari]

10. Wasn't he at Berkeley first? n/t

[Hissyspit]

15. Feith is still teaching at Georgetown as far as I know.

[Buzz Clik]

9. Folks have been bitching about Yoo for at least two years.

It's a bit late to complain now.

[Peace Patriot]

11. Why is he teaching in Berkeley's law school? Because young U.S. law students

need training in how to lie, and how to twist the law and the Constitution, and international law and treaties, out of any of their recognizable original intentions, to serve the global corporate predators who rule over us.

That's why.

[Canuckistanian]

12. Yoo, Gonzales, Viet Dinh, and Addington should be in the legal Hall of Shame

They ALL have added to the notion that the Executive branch is all-powerful and is answerable to nobody.

They should be considered as the WORST traitors to America.

This has already lead to the downfall of world opinion of America and when American citizens realize the true impact they've had on justice, they'll curse these names.

[Olney Blue]

13. Fire his ass, Berkeley. He is a traitor.

[bleever]

14. The fallacy of immunizing yourself from crimes:

The legal analyses were so poorly crafted–making the sorts of sophomoric arguments that would land a law student a failing grade on an examination, that Justice was forced to rescind them. It immediately crafted new opinions, which it continues to keep under lock and key, with the certain knowledge that when they are disclosed the resulting public uproar will force their withdrawal as well. This is the quality of legal work that emanates from the Justice Department under Alberto Gonzales, and now, Michael Mukasey.

They also missed the established precedent I have cited repeatedly here, namely United States v. Altstoetter, under the rule of which the conduct of the torture lawyers is a criminal act not shielded by any notions of government immunity.