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Law Prof: Prosecute John Yoo
Erwin Chemerinsky, Dean of the Law School at the University of California Irvine, has called for prosecuting John Yoo for a legal opinion. Well, this would only be done once, and for a good cause, of course, so there’s really no down-side to putting one fellow in jail for a brief. As the article quotes the learned Dean:
“How else do we as a society express our outrage? How else do we deter it in the future—except by criminal prosecutions?”
Huh! Great point. I’m coming up short on alternatives. I mean, he’s really on to something here: what is the point of having a legal system if it doesn’t click its heels, crisply salute, and draw up papers because we want to express our outrage?
However. As much as I admire the Dean’s desire to hasten us towards an emotion-based legal system, I am troubled by the suspicion that he has never called for such a thing before, and the first example he chooses is an Asian-American. Don’t get me wrong – prosecute away. I just want to make sure we don’t have a disparate-impact situation.
Published in General
It been quite a while since I was a regular Hugh listener, but as soon as I read the post, I heard John Eastman’s voice going “Erwin, that’s just ridiculous…”