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Did Boalt Pass the Buck on Yoo?

The Daily Californian ran an article in yesterday's sports section entitled, Bear Naked: Getting to Known John Yoo.

The author of the piece, which surveys a two-hour International House chat with Yoo about his experience as a sports fan in Washington, begins by noting, "[I]t's entirely beyond my scope to discuss the moral and technical merits of the unitary executive theory. What I did learn, through a two-hour conversation at the I-House, is that Yoo is an interesting man and that, well, he's a man."

Both of those sentences make much-needed points: Con law is hard, and people are human. Those points are much-needed in the light of the fact that the most vigorous commentators on Yoo are also the people who know the least about the issues, and who neglect that Yoo is, after all, a human-decision maker. Just like the rest of us.

Having spent last spring in Yoo's class, having taken a personal interest in the issue, and having gained a few months of perspective, I would like to share one thought about Yoo, and our law school.

My thought is that Boalt dropped the ball. Think about it:  John Yoo, a tenured professor at Berkeley Law, took a political bullet for the President because he was the President's lawyer.  Talk about  a teachable moment in legal professionalism! Academic freedom; service to country; legal ethics; politics; war; tenure -- all these issues were floating around our hallowed halls last spring, yet if you asked most of our professors whether Yoo made the correct ethical or moral decision, you would have had better luck listening for a pin drop than an answer. In substance, it matters little to me what Boalt professors and faculty think about Yoo or Bush or torture.  But the fact that they bit their lips and held their tongues in front of 800 soon-to-be lawyers seems disappointing. What could have motivated that silence? Political nonchalance? Adademic courtesy?  Decorum?  What kind of message did Boalt send to a rising generation of America's attorneys? That niceties are more important in the law than frankness or moral compass?

Maybe I've been party to the wrong conversations; maybe I missed the big meeting. But I doubt it. This issue involved a Boalt professor's central role in international politics, made national headlines and kept pundits wringing their hands for weeks. Yet, as my learned brother Earl Warren once remarked in passing, all we got was a letter on a website and a few comment-threads on this blog.

In BERKELEY.

Full post as published by Nuts & Boalts on July 28, 2008 (boomark / email).