|
| Affiliation | Republican |
|
| |
2009-01-01 |
|
|
| Name | John Yoo |
| Address |
Berkeley, California , United States |
| Email | None |
| Website | None |
| Born |
June 10, 1967
(57 years)
|
| Contributor | Scott³ |
| Last Modifed | Juan Croniqueur
Jun 10, 2023 04:48am |
| Tags |
Korean -
|
| Info | John Choon Yoo (born June 10, 1967 in Seoul) is an American attorney and former official in the U.S. Department of Justice.
He has been a professor of law at the University of California, Berkeley's School of Law (Boalt Hall) since 1993. He is currently serving as a visiting professor of law at the Chapman University School of Law in Orange County, California. Yoo has authored two books on presidential power and the war on terrorism, as well as numerous journal and newspaper articles. He has held the Fulbright Distinguished Chair in Law at the University of Trento and has also been a visiting law professor at the Free University of Amsterdam and the University of Chicago. Since 2003, Yoo has also worked as a visiting scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative and libertarian think tank. He also writes a monthly column, entitled Closing Arguments, for the Philadelphia Inquirer.
Yoo, a member of the Pennsylvania State Bar, was a law clerk for Appeals Court judge Laurence H. Silberman and for Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. He also served for a time as general counsel of the Senate Judiciary Committee. Yoo is best known for his work from 2001 to 2003 in the Department of Justice's Office of Legal Counsel under the George W. Bush Administration. In the Justice Department, Yoo's expansive view of Presidential power led to a close relationship with the office of Vice President Dick Cheney. Yoo played a significant role in the legal justification for the Bush Administration's policy in the War on Terror, arguing that prisoner-of-war status under the Geneva Conventions does not apply to enemy combatants captured during the War in Afghanistan and held at the Guantanamo Bay detention camp, asserting executive authority to undertake waterboarding and other "enhanced interrogation techniques" regared as torture by the current Justice Department. Yoo furthermore argued that the President was not bound by the War Crimes Act, and provided a legal opinion backing the Bush Administration's warrantless wiretapping program.
Yoo's legal opinions were controversial within the Bush Administration. Secretary of State Colin Powell strongly opposed the invalidation of the Geneva Conventions, while U.S. Navy general counsel Alberto Mora campaigned internally against what he saw as the "catastrophically poor legal reasoning" and dangerous extremism of Yoo's legal opinions. In December 2003, Yoo's memo on permissible interrogation techniques was repudiated by the Office of Legal Counsel, then under the direction of Jack Goldsmith, as legally unsound. In June 2004, another of Yoo's memos on torture was leaked to the press, after which it was repudiated by Goldsmith and the OLC.
Yoo's contribution to these memos has remained a source of controversy after his departure from the Justice Department; he was called to testify before the House Judiciary Committee in 2008 in defense of his role. The Justice Department's Office of Professional Responsibility has been investigating Yoo's work since 2004, and is completing a report which is said to be sharply critical of his legal justification for waterboarding and other interrogation techniques. In 2009, Baltasar Garzón Real, a Spanish judged famed for his prosecutions of international human rights abusers such as Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet, launched an investigation of Yoo for war crimes.
As an infant, Yoo emigrated with his parents from South Korea to the United States. He grew up in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, graduating from the Episcopal Academy in 1985, and graduated with a B.A., summa cum laude in American history from Harvard University in 1989 and Yale Law School in 1992. Yoo clerked for United States Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas and U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit Judge Laurence Silberman. From 1995 to 1996, he was general counsel for the Senate Judiciary Committee. Yoo is an active member of the Federalist Society. He is married to Elsa Arnett, the daughter of Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Peter Arnett.
Wikipedia profile [Link] |
 | BOOKS |
 |
|
| Title |
Purchase |
Contributor |
|
| Start Date |
End Date |
Type |
Title |
Contributor |
|
| INFORMATION LINKS |
|
|
|
