c/o BOALT BULLETIN BOARD:
The law school is exploring a program to assist military personnel and veterans with their legal matters. The clinic will begin this year with cases in which students assist veterans through the administrative process for disability and insurance benefits. It will provide 2L and 3L students an opportunity to apply legal skills and knowledge to actual cases. Active duty military members, veterans and their families, who cannot afford private counsel, will be eligible for the clinic's services. Students will receive independent research credit. The clinic will be directed by Professor John Yoo and a faculty committee including Professors Thomas Barnes, Michael Heyman, Sandy Kadish, and Laurent Mayali. Interested students should email a resume and statement of interest to Jennifer Zahgkuni at jzahgkuni@law.berkeley.edu.
meanwhile, as international
charges of war crimes mount, John Yoo moderates
the debate on the role of international courts... how does Berkeley Law manage to keep a straight face? And just who's in charge here?
Christopher Edley, Jr., is supposedly in charge at Boalt Hall. I think he wants to hide behind the specious claim that he keeps Yoo on as a free-speech issue. Or maybe he claims that Yoo's tenure ties his hands. The second claim may have some substance--though I wager there would be a way to suspend Yoo from performing as a professor if Edley had the stomach for such a measure. As for the first, I call it specious. U.C. Berkeley is under no obligation to SPONSER Yoo in order to maintain free speech. It is one thing to allow free speech. It is quite another thing to appoint or maintain appointment to a teaching position. Appointing as a teacher implies some positive evaluation on the part of a university of what it is the teacher actually teaches. Granted, tenure clogs this issue some. But a math teacher would not remain active who decided to dispense with all odd numbers. A biology teacher would probably not be sustained who left evolution out of the account of biological development. A physics teacher who decided gravity is sheer hoax would probably not be permitted to continue. Yoo's approach to law is as egregiously misconceived as would be any of these. He should be let go. - Tomo