So the big question when John Yoo speaks at Chapman University next week about presidential power is: Will he be shackled? Probably not, seeing as how this is not Spain, but were Orange within the Iberian Peninsula nation and NATO ally, he'd be under criminal indictment for sanctioning torture at Guantánamo.
The Fletcher Jones Distinguished Visiting Professor of Law's presence at Chapman certainly has sparked debate, and not just the one he's participating in Tuesday morning.
The National Lawyers Guild hosts a teach-in titled “National Security and
Torture: Human Rights, Rule of Law, and War Crimes; The Torture Memos
of John Yoo” from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Saturday in Chapman University School of Law's Kennedy Hall, Room 237. Panelists include Oil, Power and Empire author Larry Everest and Meiklejohn Civil Liberties Institute president Ann
Fagan Ginger. For more information, email Shirly Peng.
Yoo, a professor at UC Berkeley's School of Law at Boalt Hall, will be alongside John C. Eastman,
dean and Donald P. Kennedy Chair in Law at Chapman's School of
Law, debating Chapman law professors Katherine Darmer and Larry Rosenthal on “Presidential Power and Success in Times of Crisis.” The fun begins at 11 a.m. in the big room, Memorial Hall, but you need tickets available through Chapman's ticket office or by calling (714) 997-6812.
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Yoo is among “The Bush Six” targeted in Spain's criminal
investigation, the others being: former U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales; Federal Appeals Court
Judge and former Assistant Attorney General Jay Bybee; former Defense Department general counsel and current Chevron
lawyer William J. Haynes II; Vice President Dick Cheney's former chief of
staff David Addington; and former Undersecretary of Defense Douglas J.
Feith.
Prosecutors accuse The Bush Six of having given the green light to the torture and
mistreatment of prisoners held in U.S. detention in “the war on
terror,” in the context of a pending proceeding before
the Spanish court involving terrorism charges against five Spaniards formerly
held at Guantánamo.
“The Bush Six labored at length to create a legal black hole in which
they could implement their policies safe from the scrutiny of American
courts and the American media,” writes Scott Horton, a law professor and legal affairs writer for Harper's, The American
Lawyer and other publications, on his blog, The Daily Beast. “Perhaps they achieved much of their
objective, but the law of unintended consequences has kicked in. If
U.S. courts and prosecutors will not address the matter because of a
lack of jurisdiction, foreign courts appear only too happy to step in.”
OC Weekly Editor-in-Chief Matt Coker has been engaging, enraging and entertaining readers of newspapers, magazines and websites for decades. He spent the first 13 years of his career in journalism at daily newspapers before “graduating” to OC Weekly in 1995 as the alternative newsweekly’s first calendar editor.