University Sign-on Letter

Dear University of California Vice Provost Sheldon Zedek, Chancellor Robert Birgeneau, and Berkeley Law Dean Christopher Edley: We, the undersigned students of Berkeley Law, write to petition the University of California and Berkeley Law School to initiate an investigation into whether Professor John Yoo’s “outside professional conduct,” as an attorney of the U.S. Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel (OLC), violated the UC Faculty Code of Conduct, as set out in the University of California Academic Personnel Manual (Section 015). In his work for the OLC, while a tenured member of the faculty, Professor Yoo was the principal author of several memoranda that attempted to provide legal justification for the torture of military detainees, in contravention of the absolute prohibition on torture codified in both domestic and international law. Additionally, Professor Yoo’s legal opinions led to the approval of the president’s Surveillance Program, which enabled the violation of U.S. citizens’ constitutional rights through illegal warrantless wiretapping. The Justice Department has subsequently withdrawn several of Professor Yoo’s memoranda, acknowledging their poor reasoning and untenable legal conclusions. In light of this record, we are left to draw one of two conclusions: Professor Yoo employed unconscionably poor legal reasoning in good faith, or he intentionally sought to subvert the law. As an institution of higher learning, and as a professional school that seeks to model ethical professional behavior for the next generation of lawyers, both should be of serious concern to Berkeley Law, especially given the gravity of the consequences of Professor Yoo’s actions: torture, illegal detention, and death. Investigating whether Professor Yoo violated the Faculty Code of Conduct is amply justified by the available public record. If UC finds that it is unable to open an investigation or lacks sufficient information, it has a duty to confirm publicly on what grounds this decision is based, including what standards it is applying and what information or evidence it lacks. While Dean Edley and Chancellor Birgeneau have indicated that UC may not discipline Yoo until he has been convicted of illegal activity, the Faculty Code of Conduct indicates otherwise. While the code includes criminal conviction among “examples of types of unacceptable faculty behavior which are subject to University discipline,” it explicitly notes that these examples are “not exhaustive.” Academic freedom is essential to the integrity of any university, but it is irrelevant to the case at hand. John Yoo wrote these memoranda not as a law professor offering an academic opinion, but as a government attorney providing counsel to the president of the United States. His actions were not an exercise of academic freedom of speech but rather professional misconduct, if not criminal activity. As members of the Berkeley Law community and as current and future legal practitioners, we are compelled to speak out against the conduct of Professor John Yoo and other government lawyers who authorized illegal acts of torture and the violation of civil and human rights. We respectfully call for an immediate inquiry by the University. Sincerely,