By Asaf Shalev – Contributing Writer
John Yoo (right) joined a panel discussion on privacy rights with
David Cole. Protesters from World Can’t Wait shouted ‘torture’ at Yoo.
Boalt Hall School of Law professor John Yoo, who authored memos for the Bush administration that many have said condone torture, spoke yesterday near campus as protesters wearing orange jumpsuits and bags over their heads shouted “torture” at him.
As Yoo spoke yesterday at the Bancroft Hotel, members of World Can’t
Wait, a group that aims to “drive out the Bush regime,” disrupted the
lecture by yelling inside and outside the building. Yoo did not speak
on matters directly related to the memos. “We are demonstrating and
giving a voice to the torture victims of the Bush administration,” said
Stephanie Tang, a spokesperson for the organization. “Yoo wrote the
memos that allowed (the administration) to shred to pieces the Geneva
Convention.”
UC Berkeley has come under criticism for not dismissing Yoo, who is
considered a “war criminal” by some legal experts for the arguments on
torture he wrote while working at the Office of Legal Counsel in the
Department of Justice from 2001-03.
Yoo has been teaching at Boalt
since 1993 and received his tenure in 1999. “In his professional
capacity as a lawyer, he violated the American Bar Association’s code
of ethics,” said Thomas Reifer, a University of San Diego sociology
professor who is writing a book on the question of torture in
constitutional and international law. Boalt dean Christopher Edley
released a statement last week defending Yoo’s appointment at the law
school while disagreeing with Yoo’s analysis in the torture memoranda. “Assuming
one believes as I do that Professor Yoo offered bad ideas and even
worse advice during his government service, that judgment alone would
not warrant dismissal or even a potentially chilling inquiry,” he
wrote.
Two memoranda written by Yoo seek to provide the legal
basis for interrogation and detention techniques such as torture. The
second memo, which contains 81 pages of detailed legal argument, was
only disclosed two weeks ago.
Yoo’s memos aim to redefine the
meaning of torture to include only actions that lead to bodily organ
failure or death, Reifer said.
According to Reifer, the memos also
said the techniques can only be defined as torture if the intention of
the interrogator is physical harm. Therefore, if used only to obtain
information, interrogation techniques cannot be considered torture.
(Yoo) figured out a crafty way to sidestep the law,” he said.
Yoo could not be reached for comment.
Though
Edley disagreed with Yoo’s legal analysis, he wrote that Yoo is not the
one who bears the brunt of the responsibility for any torture conducted
under the administration.
“Yes, it does matter that Yoo was an
adviser, but President Bush and his national security appointees were
the deciders,” Edley wrote.
Professor emeritus of law Robert H.
Cole, who has been a vocal opponent of the torture policy and was the
only Boalt faculty member to protest against Yoo when the first memo
became public two years ago, said the law school has not done enough to
address the issue in previous years.
“The law school has swept the
entire thing under the rug for years. This has given people the
impression the law school is indifferent to torture,” Cole said.
“(Edley) has brought the matter out into the open … and this is a
very good development.”
Edley’s statement comes after the National
Lawyers Guild, a progressive law association with a chapter at Boalt,
called for Yoo’s dismissal last week.
“Our tax money is going to pay the salary of a war criminal,” said Marjorie Cohn, the guild’s president.
Despite his vocal opposition to Yoo, Cole said he understands Edley’s position in the statement.
“I
agree with the dean that the standard for dismissing someone is very
high and the dean’s response is realistic and reasoned,” he said.
He added that he is less concerned with Yoo’s fate and more so with a decline in the value placed on human rights.
“There is something inviolable about every person’s humanity,” he said.”