John Yoo

John Yoo is the Emanuel Heller Professor of Law at the University of California at Berkeley and a nonresident senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. He is also a distinguished visiting scholar at the University of Texas at Austin’s School of Civic Leadership and its Civitas Institute. He is co-host of the Lawtalk podcast (with Richard Epstein and Charles Cooke) and the Three Whiskey Happy Hour podcast (with Steve Hayward and Lucretia).

Yoo has clerked for Justice Clarence Thomas of the U.S. Supreme Court and has served as general counsel of the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee. From 2001 to 2003, he served as a deputy assistant attorney general in the Office of Legal Counsel at the U.S. Department of Justice, where he worked on issues involving foreign affairs, national security and the separation of powers.

He received his B.A., summa cum laude, in American history from Harvard University. Between college and law school, he worked as a newspaper reporter in Washington, D.C. He received his J.D. from Yale Law School, where he was an articles editor of the Yale Law Journal.

Yoo has published articles about foreign affairs, international law and constitutional law in the nation's leading law journals. He has also contributed to the editorial pages of the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, and National Review.