Berkeley to weigh war crime charges against 'torture memo' author Yoo Stephen C. Webster

Published: Saturday December 6, 2008





Print This Email This John Yoo, author of the infamous 'torture memo' which the Justice Department used as a legal basis for the Bush Administration's use of harsh interrogation techniques, is under fire once again.



On Monday, Berkeley's city council will vote on a proposal by its Peace and Justice Commission as to whether they will recommend war crimes charges for the UC Berkeley constitutional and international law professor. If passed, the measure would also order UC Berkeley to provide alternative courses to Yoo's class at the Boalt Hall School of Law.



"It gives students with a conscience the freedom to exercise their options," Berkeley Councilman Kriss Worthington told the San Francisco Chronicle. "You shouldn't be punished academically because you have a moral compunction about taking a course from someone who says it's OK for the U.S. to torture people."



As a Justice Department lawyer, John Yoo wrote in 2003 that Bush's seemingly supreme authority in wartime trumped federal laws "prohibiting assault, maiming and other crimes."



Yoo's logic led him so far as to offer to a reporter a legal justification for a hypothetical situation in which the president would order a child tortured by crushing his testicles.



In testimony before the House Judiciary Committee, Yoo also continually gamed and refused to answer Congressman John Conyers' question as to whether the president could order someone buried alive.



This video is from C-Span, on June 26, 2008:





In spite of the outrage his work has drawn, UC Berkeley has refused to fire Yoo.



As a tenured professor at the University of California, Berkeley, Law School, Yoo has a guarantee of employment that can only be removed in the most extreme circumstances, writes Dean Christopher Ederly, Jr., in a statement posted to the school's Web site.



"My sense is that the vast majority of legal academics with a view of the matter disagree with substantial portions of Professor Yoos analyses, including a great many of his colleagues at Berkeley," Ederly writes. "If, however, this strong consensus were enough to fire or sanction someone, then academic freedom would be meaningless."



The Berkeley city council's Peace and Justice Commission was most recently in the news after the council passed a measure condemning a military recruiting center. They even called the Marines "unwelcome intruders" in the city, and the measure triggered massive protests at city hall.



The move, which the city later backed off of, drew sharp criticism from the political right, and Sen. Jim DeMint (R SC) went so far as to draft legislation to strike all federal earmarks given to the city.



"We went too far when we passed [the resolution]," said Berkeley Mayor Tom Bates. "We said things we probably shouldn't have said."



Ultimately, even if it passes, Berkeley's recommendation of war crimes charges for Yoo will be largely symbolic. Boalt Hall School of Law spokeswoman Susan Gluss also told the Chronicle that the council's vote will not influence the university's policies.



"We respect the politics of Berkeley, home of the free speech movement, and their right to debate this issue," Gluss said. "They can pass this measure, but it won't have any bearing on the university's policy."



With additional reporting by Nick Juliano.



