Yoo

John Yoo is a former Justice Department lawyer who had his hand in legal memoranda for the Department of Defense and the CIA to give legal cover for their use of "enhanced interrogation techniques." These memos have been widely condemned as legally unsound, shoddy pieces of work that were simply after-the-fact justifications for the widespread use of torture after Cheney infamously proclaimed "we have to work... the dark side, if you will."

Today, Yoo has an oped in the Wall Street Journal attacking last week's decision by the U.S. Supreme Court holding that the military commissions used to try Guantanamo detainees are unconstitutional. Glenn Greenwald demolishes Yoo's reasoning in characteristically thorough and methodical fashion over at Salon.

After writing the torture memos, Yoo left the government and became a tenured professor at Boalt (UC Berkeley). Question: should Yoo be removed from teaching future lawyers because of his active participation in providing legal justifications for government sponsored torture? Professor Levinson on balkinization thinks not.