John Yoo

Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

John Yoo
유준
Jay S. Bybee
PresidentGeorge W. Bush
Personal details
Born
Yoo Choon

(1967-07-10) July 10, 1967 (age 57)
Paul M. Bator Award (2001)[1]
Korean name
Hangul
유준
Hanja
有俊
RRYu Jun
MRYu Chun

John Choon Yoo (

warrantless wiretapping, and the Geneva Conventions
.

Yoo was the author of the controversial "

War on Terror. As the deputy assistant attorney general in the Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) of the Department of Justice, Yoo wrote the Torture Memos to determine the legal limits for the torture of detainees following the September 11 attacks. The legal guidance on interrogation authored by Yoo and his successors in the OLC were rescinded by President Barack Obama in 2009.[3][4][5] Some individuals and groups called for the investigation and prosecution of Yoo under various anti-torture and anti-war crimes statutes.[6][7][8][9]

A report by the Justice Department's

enhanced interrogation methods" constituted "intentional professional misconduct" and recommended that Yoo be referred to his state bar association for possible disciplinary proceedings.[10][11][12][13] Senior Justice Department lawyer David Margolis overruled the report in 2010, saying that Yoo and Assistant Attorney General Jay Bybee—who authorized the memos—had exercised "poor judgment" but that the department lacked a clear standard to conclude misconduct.[14][12]

Early life and education

Yoo was born on July 10, 1967, in Seoul, South Korea. His parents were anti-communist, having been refugees during the Korean War. He immigrated to the United States with his family when he was a young child and grew up in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.[15] He attended high school at Episcopal Academy, graduating in 1985.[16] While a student there, Yoo studied Greek and Latin.[17]

Yoo matriculated at

Yale Law Journal, graduating with a J.D. in 1992.[19]

Career

After law school, Yoo was a

Academic career

Yoo has been a professor at the

Free University of Amsterdam, the University of Chicago, and Chapman University School of Law. Since 2003, Yoo has also been a visiting scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank in Washington. He wrote a monthly column, "Closing Arguments", for The Philadelphia Inquirer.[23] He has written academic books including Crisis and Command.[23]

Bush administration (2001–2003)

Yoo has been principally associated with his work from 2001 to 2003 in the Department of Justice's

Torture memos

In what was originally known as the Bybee memo, Yoo asserted that executive authority during wartime allows waterboarding and other forms of torture, which were euphemistically referred to as "enhanced interrogation techniques"[26] were issued to the CIA. Yoo's memos narrowly defined torture and American habeas corpus obligations.[27] Yoo argued in his legal opinion that the president was not bound by the American War Crimes Act of 1996. Yoo's legal opinions were not shared by everyone within the Bush Administration. Secretary of State Colin Powell strongly opposed what he saw as an invalidation of the Geneva Conventions,[28] 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 opinions.[29] In December 2003, Yoo's memo on permissible interrogation techniques was repudiated as legally unsound by the OLC, then under the direction of Jack Goldsmith.[29]

In June 2004, another of Yoo's memos on interrogation techniques was leaked to the press, after which it was repudiated by Goldsmith and the OLC.

lawful combatants, so they could be shot, on sight, to justify his assertion that individuals apprehended in Afghanistan could be tortured.[32][33]

Yoo's contribution to these memos has remained a source of controversy following his departure from the Justice Department;

Al Qaeda suspects," although the recommendation that he be referred to his state bar association for possible disciplinary proceedings was overruled by David Margolis, another senior Justice department lawyer.[12]

In 2009, President Barack Obama issued Executive Order 13491, rescinding the legal guidance on interrogation authored by Yoo and his successors in the Office of Legal Counsel.[3][4][5]

In December 2005, Doug Cassel, a law professor from the University of Notre Dame, asked Yoo, "If the President deems that he's got to torture somebody, including by crushing the testicles of the person's child, there is no law that can stop him?", to which Yoo replied, "No treaty." Cassel followed up with "Also no law by Congress—that is what you wrote in the August 2002 memo," to which Yoo replied, "I think it depends on why the President thinks he needs to do that."[40]

War crimes accusations

Yoo at the Miller Center on March 19, 2010

Criminal proceedings against Yoo have begun in Spain: in a move that could have led to an extradition request, Judge Baltasar Garzón in March 2009 referred a case against Yoo to the chief prosecutor.[41][42] The Spanish Attorney General recommended against pursuing the case.

On November 14, 2006, invoking the principle of

Sister Dianna Ortiz, and Veterans for Peace.[43] Responding to the so-called "torture memoranda," Scott Horton
noted

the possibility that the authors of these memoranda counseled the use of lethal and unlawful techniques, and therefore face criminal culpability themselves. That, after all, is the teaching of United States v. Altstötter, the Nuremberg case brought against German Justice Department lawyers whose memoranda crafted the basis for implementation of the infamous 'Night and Fog Decree'.[44]

Legal scholars speculated shortly thereafter that the case has little chance of successfully making it through the German court system.[45]

Jordan Paust of the University of Houston Law Center concurred with supporters of prosecution and in early 2008 criticized the US Attorney General Michael Mukasey's refusal to investigate and/or prosecute anyone who relied on these legal opinions:

[I]t is legally and morally impossible for any member of the executive branch to be acting lawfully or within the scope of his or her authority while following OLC opinions that are manifestly inconsistent with or violative of the law. General Mukasey,

just following orders is no defense![46]

In 2009, the Spanish Judge

the Bush Six) for war crimes.[47]

On April 13, 2013, the

human rights violations. The list was a direct response to the so-called Magnitsky list revealed by the United States the day before.[48] Russia stated that Yoo was among those responsible for "the legalization of torture" and "unlimited detention".[49][50]

After the December 2014 release of the executive summary of the

Senate Intelligence Committee report on CIA torture, Erwin Chemerinsky, then the dean of the University of California, Irvine School of Law, called for the prosecution of Yoo for his role in authoring the Torture Memos as "conspiracy to violate a federal statute".[8]

On May 12, 2012, the Kuala Lumpur War Crimes Commission found Yoo, along with former President Bush, former Vice President Cheney, and several other senior members of the Bush administration, guilty of war crimes in absentia. The trial heard "harrowing witness accounts from victims of torture who suffered at the hands of US soldiers and contractors in Iraq and Afghanistan".[51]

Warrantless wiretapping