Profile

Full Name

Professor John Choon Yoo

Position

Emanuel S. Heller Professor of Law

Organization

Berkeley School of Law

URL

https://www.law.berkeley.edu/our-faculty/faculty-profiles/john-yoo/

Biography

John Yoo is the Emanuel Heller Professor of Law at the University of California at Berkeley, a Visiting Scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, and a Visiting Fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University.

His tenth book, Defender-in-Chief: Trump’s Fight for Presidential Power, was published in the summer of 2020 by St. Martin’s Press. Professor Yoo’s other books examine presidential power, terrorism, the laws of war, military and law enforcement technology, and the Constitution’s separation of powers.

Professor Yoo has published more than 100 articles in academic journals on subjects including national security, constitutional law, international law, and the Supreme Court. He also regularly contributes to the editorial pages of the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, and National Review, among others.

Professor Yoo has served in all three branches of government. He was an official in the U.S. Department of Justice, where he worked on national security and terrorism issues after the 9/11 attacks. He served as general counsel of the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee. He has been a law clerk for Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas and federal appeals Judge Laurence Silberman. He has been a visiting professor at Seoul National University in South Korea, the Interdisciplinary Center in Israel, Keio University in Japan, Trento University in Italy, the University of Chicago, and the Free University of Amsterdam.

Professor Yoo graduated from Yale Law School and summa cum laude from Harvard College. At Berkeley, Professor Yoo directs the Public Law and Policy program and the Korea Law Center and is a winner of the Federalist Society’s Paul Bator award.

History

Member for

3 years 16 weeks