Legal News

U.S. (Congress) Wants Yoo!

By Dan Slater

Dear Professor Yoo:

I write to invite you to appear before the Committee on the Judiciary at our May 6 hearing scheduled to explore issues regarding the nature and scope of Presidential power in the time of war . . . . Should you continue to refuse to testify on a cooperative basis, however, the Committee must of course proceed with its investigation and will be left with no option but to compel your appearance. — From an April 8 letter from John Conyers Jr. to John Yoo

Last week the Bush administration declassified an 81-page memo from 2003, in which John Yoo, then the deputy assistant AG in the DOJ’s Office of the Legal Counsel, concludes that even if techniques are found to be in violation of U.S. and international laws against torture, “necessity or self-defense could provide justifications for any criminal liability.”

One week later, Detroit Democrat Conyers, on behalf of the House’s judiciary committee, requested in the April 8 letter that Yoo, now a Berkeley law professor, “voluntarily” appear before the Committee on the Judiciary. Just in case Yoo has other plans on May 6, the letter adds:

I understand that, in discussions with my staff, you have expressed a reluctance to testify voluntarily on such matters. I am hopeful that you have reconsidered that stance, however, given your extensive public comments on these very issues. For example, on April 3, 2008, Esquire magazine published an interview in which you made frank and on-the-record comments regarding the origination, drafting, and scope of [Office of Legal Counsel] interrogation memoranda. Similarly, you provided on-the-record comments on the recently released March 2003 interrogation memorandum to the Washington Post just last week, describing that document as “near boilerplate” and asserting that, in pulling back from the analysis in the memorandum, the Department had “ignored [its] long tradition in defending the President’s authority in wartime.

Click here for the full text of the letter.

Full post as published by Law Blog - WSJ.com on April 09, 2008 (boomark / email).