Holder gave his speech amid protests from human rights and medical marijuana activists. In his remarks, Holder touched on some of protesters’ concerns surrounding the U.S. government’s policies on the legal prosecution of suspected terrorists. The attorney general also commended the graduating students for their sense of social responsibility.

“From protesting tuition increases across the state to rallying support for same-sex marriage, you’ve raised your voices on some of the most pressing issues facing your peers and fellow citizens,” Holder said of UC Berkeley students.

In the second half of his speech, Holder defended the civilian legal system against critics who claim that federal courts are incapable of handling terrorism cases.

“(Civilian courts) have enabled us to convict scores of people of terrorism-related offenses since September 11,” Holder said in his speech. “Hundreds are properly, safely and securely held in our federal prisons — not Guantanamo — today.”

Outside the ceremony, around five protesters wore orange jumpsuits and black hoods similar to those worn by prisoners and handed out fliers to people as they arrived. The protest was organized by the San Francisco chapter of The World Can’t Wait, an organization that aims to stop the use of torture around the world.

A similar protest was held at last year’s ceremony and criticized the continued employment of law professor John Yoo, who wrote a series of controversial memos for the Bush administration that defended the use of controversial interrogation tactics.

In his address to graduates, Holder criticized the policies Congress enacted in the aftermath of 9/11, saying that they had placed “unwise and unwarranted restrictions” on where terrorist suspects could be held, charged and prosecuted.

“We used techniques that were of questionable effectiveness but were certainly inconsistent with who we say we are as a people,” Holder said. “In short, many lost faith with our founding documents and our time-tested, effective institutions.”

A group of members of Americans for Safe Access, a marijuana advocacy group, also protested against the federal government’s stance opposing medical marijuana.

The demonstration follows a lawsuit recently filed by the federal government against Berkeley Patients Group, a medical marijuana dispensary in Berkeley.

Throughout the ceremony, a plane circled the theater, towing a banner that read “Holder End RX Cannabis War #Peace4Patients.”

Holder, however, ended his address on a positive note, encouraging graduates to advocate for justice.

“Use your unique skills, your idealism and the power that your new law degree affords to better yourselves, to improve your communities and to solve the complex problems that undoubtedly lie ahead,” he said.

Contact Andy Nguyen at anguyen@dailycal.org.

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Protesters donning orange jumpsuits to resemble the Guantanamo Bay prisoners knelt silently with bags wrapped over their heads while speakers called for the university to fire UC Berkeley professor of law John Yoo for his connection to the alleged use of torture in the detention camp.

“We want to bring attention to the hunger strike, since it’s been 88 days since prisoners have begun to protest against the facility’s systemic human rights abuses,” said Stephanie Tang of The World Can’t Wait, an organization that aims to stop the use of torture to glean vital intelligence.

Speakers targeted Yoo for his legal justification of the Bush administration’s interrogation policy during his term as deputy assistant attorney general.

“The UC’s reputation is stained by the presence of John Yoo on its faculty, so we want to see the university fire and discipline him,” Tang said.

Despite the criticism, the university has continued to employee Yoo, who is a tenured professor. Campus administrators have defended this decision because of their stated commitment to maintaining academic freedom and security of employment.

In a 2008 statement, UC Berkeley School of Law Dean Christopher Edley said that while Yoo has “offered bad ideas and even worse advice during his government service,” disapproval of his legal philosophy alone does not warrant his removal.

“I reject the argument that academic freedom justifies Yoo’s position at the law school, since it is not a license to commit human rights abuses,” said Shahid Buttar, executive director of the Bill of Rights Defense Committee.

Buttar said that academic freedom defense may not hold if Yoo is prosecuted by a court of law because the General University Policy Regarding Academic Appointees stipulates that the “commission of a criminal act that has led to conviction in a court of law by a faculty member” is an example of unacceptable conduct that could be grounds for dismissal.

“I’m more interested in seeing John Yoo finally face prosecution for (his) international crimes, as required by the law, than in any accountability the university might pursue,” Buttar said.

In the past, Yoo has maintained that he was giving legal advice to the Bush administration and was not involved in creating actual policy.

While most students passed by the protest in the daily afternoon rush, its organizers believe that regardless of how many people attended the vigil, it served its purpose of informing the public.

“The truth has to be open to people, and through this vigil, we’re out to change that,” Tang said.

Contact Jason Liu at jliu@dailycal.org.

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The grounds?

The Russian government reportedly stated that these Americans were responsible for the “legalization of torture” during the Bush years, and chief among the bureaucratic offenders is Berkeley law professor John Yoo.

Independent of the tit-for-tat quality of the Russians’ announcement, there is good reason to express concern over Professor Yoo’s role in expanding the role of torture after the 9/11 terrorist attacks. And from the perspective of Berkeley students, it is tough to consider he is allowed to draw salary from the University of California given his integral role in shaping American policy around indefinite detention and “enhanced interrogation” (read: torture), and the circumstances under which he adopted such views.

While I firmly believe John Yoo has the right to speak his mind and advance the ideas in which he believes (as he is wont to do under our campus’ firm principles protecting academic freedom), he should not dishonestly vacillate between positions as we elect different presidents into office.

And funnily enough, it’s a Berkeley professor who makes this case best.

In February 2009, campus economics professor Brad DeLong called for John Yoo to be fired. In a blog update illustratively titled “I Never Thought I Would … Be The Kind of Crank Who Wrote Letters to the Chancellor Trying to Get My Colleagues Fired,’ Delong posts a copy of a letter he wrote to UC Berkeley Chancellor Birgeneau demanding the dismissal of Professor Yoo.

In the letter, he paraphrases rather accurately how Professor Yoo advocated in a 2003 document referred to as the “Torture Memo” that “President Bush’s commander-in-chief power is without limit save for impeachment itself” and that it “is unlawful for any member of the United States armed forces to disobey a presidential order to torture prisoners.”

However, it was only three years earlier in essay entitled “The Imperial Presidency Abroad” that Professor Yoo asserted “President Clinton’s commander-in-chief power is crabbed and restricted.” And that Clinton was “accelerat[ing] disturbing trends in foreign policy that undermine democratic accountability and respect for the rule of law.”

If Professor Yoo believed that “democratic accountability” was necessary in 2000, what made him completely flip to arguing that the commander-in-chief’s power was “without limit?” Having never substantively addressed this reversal, one must conclude (as Professor DeLong did) that if Professor Yoo “could write ‘The Imperial President Abroad’ in 2000 and the “Torture Memo” in 2003 … he does not believe what he writes–at least not for any meaning of believe’ that any of us would recognize.”

And it is this damning cynicism pervading Professor Yoo’s time both working in government and at Berkeley that eats away at the integrity of whatever academic endeavor he pursues.

In journalism, The Washington Post’s conservative blogger Jennifer Rubin is guilty of the same sin. Writing shortly before Election Day extremely bullish articles on Mitt Romney’s chances of winning the presidency, she lamented after his loss that “the [Romney] communications team was the worst of any presidential campaign I have ever seen … It was hostile, indifferent and unhelpful to media.”

It should be noted that Ben Smith observed in October of 2011 that she scored “a rare interview with the candidate [Romney] after a recent foreign affairs speech,” whose staff she described as “‘the most professional of the presidential campaign staffs, because they are the most experienced.’” One could reasonably suggest that she changed her mind over the course of the next year, but I invite the reader to read any number of salivatory posts discussing the Romney campaign that she wrote up until she trashed him after Election Day.

Rubin’s rank dishonesty is right up there with Professor Yoo–the professions of journalism and academia respectively entail a certain of amount of respect and protection. But both that honor and shielding end up severely tested should the occupants of these jobs fail the obligations of sincere thought demanded.

Russia was politically posturing when it banned Professor Yoo from crossing its borders. And as inscrutable as Professor Yoo’s motives were in changing his opinion, the fact he does not provide sufficient justification for neither his amended thoughts or the political influence they earned him is reason alone to release him from Berkeley’s employ.

The university is a special place; in this space we are able to bring new ideas to the table and debate them fairly. But part of the contract upon entering here is that one argues her ideas with some measure of conviction. Professor Yoo, in his shameful and calculated “transformation,” has violated that contract.

Make no mistake I – unlike Professor DeLong – am not questioning Professor Yoo’s right to teach here. Nonetheless, it seems clear that censuring him and setting a precedent of serious consequences for this sort of un-academic behavior is called for.

At the very least, it would be the first step in fully grasping his deeply problematic actions and starting a campus conversation about responsible academic and intellectual behavior in a democratic society.

Image source: Miller_Center via Creative Commons.

Contact Noah Kulwin at nkulwin@dailycal.org or follow him on Twitter: @noahkulwin.

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Russia has banned UC Berkeley professor of law John Yoo from entering the country for his connection to the alleged torture of Guantanamo Bay prisoners, according to an announcement Saturday.

Yoo was among 18 Americans banned by the Eastern European nation, apparently in response to the United States’ ban of 18 Russian officials for alleged human rights violations. Russia’s list included Yoo, who was a Department of Justice official under former president George W. Bush and is notorious for his issuance of a 2003 memo that allowed the use of contentious questioning tactics on Guantanamo Bay prisoners.

“My conservative friends are intensely jealous that I was honored by the Russian government over the weekend,” Yoo said in a statement posted on Ricochet.com.

Curt Wechsler, a member of the organization The World Can’t Wait and editor of the blog Fire John Yoo!, pointed out what he sees as the hypocrisy of an American ban on “war criminals” from other countries while UC Berkeley allows Yoo to teach at its law school. Wechsler said he views Yoo as a war criminal.

“I think that it should be extended to any other country on Earth,” Wechsler said of Russia’s ban on Yoo. “He shouldn’t be allowed anywhere. He should be brought up to trial and given a fair trial. (Knowing) what we know, he should be removed from the faculty.”

The United States banned 18 Russian officials for their involvement in the imprisonment of Russian lawyer Sergei Magnitsky, who died in jail in 2009. Congress passed the Magnitsky Act in 2012 to punish Russian officials who were allegedly involved with the prisoner’s death for their violation of human rights.

Yoo, for his part, did not seem particularly concerned about the ban or its implications for the U.S.-Russia relationship.

“But seriously, I couldn’t go to Russia during the Cold War, and I can’t go now,” Yoo said in his post. “What’s the difference these days in regimes? Obama has as much chance of resetting relations with Putin as he would have with Stalin.”

Contact Tara Hurley at thurley@dailycal.org.

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At an award luncheon, Jon Streeter, president of the State Bar of California, presented Choper with the 2012 Bernard E. Witkin Medal. Sreeter said Choper has been committed to public service through his teaching at a leading public university.

“We try to recognize someone who through a lifetime of service has made a huge difference to the law and the justice system,” said Streeter, who is Choper’s former student. “He has for decades been one of the leading scholars in constitutional law and is well known to academics and judges.”

Choper has long contributed to scholarship analyzing the role of the U.S. Supreme Court in judicial review. After graduating from the University of Pennsylvania School of Law in 1960, Choper served as law clerk to U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice Earl Warren.

Choper joined the UC Berkeley School of Law faculty in 1965 after a brief faculty appointment at the University of Minnesota Law School. He served as dean of UC Berkeley’s law school between 1982 and 1992 and continues to teach at the school as the Earl Warren Professor of Public Law, a position he has held since 1991. Throughout his academic career, Choper has taught as a visiting professor at universities worldwide, including Harvard Law School, Vrije Universiteit in Amsterdam and the University of New South Wales in Sydney, among others.

He has also published numerous books exploring the role of judicial review, including one that received the Order of the Coif Triennial Book Award in 1982. As a result of his scholarship, Choper is also often quoted in articles and reports on Supreme Court rulings.

“He is a scholar of the highest order, but he has never lost touch with the issues of interest to the practical operation of law,” said Kevin Cole, a member of the Witken Medal selection panel and a professor at the University of San Diego Law School, in an email. “Through his service at Boalt Hall and otherwise, he has shaped and assisted more California attorneys than we could reasonably estimate.”

Established in 1993, the Witkin Medal is awarded annually to recognize attorneys, judges and legal scholars who have altered the legal landscape, according to the State Bar of California website. Previous awardees have included California Supreme Court justices, district court judges and attorneys working in public service. Choper said he feels humbled by the recognition.

“I am very pleased to have received it,” he said. “I have studied the names who have received it in the past, and they all have very distinguished careers. I feel privileged and honored to join them.”

John Yoo, a professor at UC Berkeley’s law school, called Choper a “long-time servant” of the law school and the campus whose work studying judicial review and the rights of religious minorities has had a considerable impact on the legal community.

“It is fair to say that in both fields, Choper has published leading works that have moved his field forward and influenced generations of scholars,” Yoo said in email.

Contact Andrea Guzman at aguzman@dailycal.org.

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Members of the Bay Area chapter of national anti-war group World Can’t Wait are calling for protesters to speak out and bring signs and orange ribbons — items that represent protest according to the SF Bay World Can’t Wait website — to distribute to graduates and their guests.

“John Yoo teaching constitutional law to the next generation of lawyers and judges is a perverse mockery of what a law school education should be,” said World Can’t Wait spokesperson Stephanie Tang in a press release. “Yoo’s infamous disregard for, and destruction of, basic legal principles under the U.S. Constitution and international law, including the Geneva Conventions, renders him unfit to teach.”

Yoo, who is also a former deputy assistant attorney general, came under heavy scrutiny for authoring memos to the Bush administration concluding that an interrogation technique must cause damage equal “to the level of death, organ failure, or the permanent impairment of a significant body function” to be considered torture.

A federal appeals court last Wednesday threw out convicted terrorist Jose Padilla’s lawsuit accusing Yoo of authorizing illegal interrogation methods, ruling that because the definition of torture remained unsettled at the time Yoo authored the memos, he is protected from such lawsuits.

“(E)veryone needs a hobby,” Yoo said in an email. “For denizens of Berkeley, protesting makes for a neat distraction from working.”

Christopher Yee is an assistant news editor.

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In a unanimous decision, three justices of the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that Yoo, a former deputy assistant attorney general, is protected from such lawsuits, reversing a lower court decision from 2009 that allowed the civil suit to go forward.

Padilla’s 2008 lawsuit draws upon a series of memos Yoo wrote between 2001 and 2002 that shaped national security politics and expanded executive power during the Bush administration.

Yoo gained notoriety for authoring memos concluding that an interrogation technique must cause damage equal “to the level of death, organ failure, or the permanent impairment of a significant body function” to be considered torture.

Padilla claimed that Yoo, over a series of memos, authorized and covered up illegal interrogation methods allegedly used against him including sleep deprivation, stress positions, isolation and extremes of temperature, light and darkness.

But the court ruled that because the definition of torture remained unsettled at the time Yoo authored the memos, he is protected from such lawsuits.

“We are compelled to conclude that, regardless of the legality of Padila’s detention and the wisdom of Yoo’s judgments, at the time he acted the law was not ‘sufficiently clear that every reasonable official would have understood that what he (was) doing violate(d)’ the plaintiffs’ rights,” said Judge Raymond Fisher in the 3-0 ruling.

Padilla, currently serving a 17-year sentence, was arrested in 2002 and initially charged with conspiracy to detonate a radioactive “dirty bomb” but later convicted on unrelated charges of conspiracy to fund Islamic extremist groups, according to court documents.

In January, another appeals court dismissed similar charges by Padilla against former Bush administration officials including former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.

“The 9th Circuit’s decision confirms that this litigation has been baseless from the outset,” Yoo said in a statement after the ruling. “For several years, Padilla and his attorneys have been harassing the government officials … and will need to find a new hobby for his remaining time in prison.”

Curan Mehra covers higher education.

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