Scott Horton has a well thought out response to the Dean's refusal:
agree with Dean Edley on two key points. First, John Yoo is entitled to his legal views, however eccentric, radical and harmful to our democracy. The academic community benefits from the presence of the philosophical outlier. It sharpens debate, and can furnish us with a reminder of the fundamental values which the outlier disparages. And often enough it is the outlier who is proven right against the weight of accepted opinion. The leaders of the academic community have a duty to protect those who profess unpopular views from the crowd that menaces and seeks to silence them. And this, properly viewed, is Dean Edley’s duty.
Second, it would not be proper to fire John Yoo on the basis of his views alone, nor would it be proper to terminate him without following formal process in which the charges against him are proved up and he is given a full opportunity to prove his defenses. Dean Edley is correct to hold rigorously to process. And those who crusade for Yoo's firing must recognize the legitimacy of process and accept that even if Yoo is ultimately fired it should only be by proper process. Much of the rage against John Yoo comes from his strained legal efforts to craft a space beyond the reach of law into which the Administration’s targets could be disappeared, a legal black hole into which their rights as human beings would be collapsed. It would be hypocritical of his critics to strip Yoo of his proper rights in accusing him of denying the rights of others.
Dean Edley concludes that as a “mere advisor,” Yoo’s ethical and legal culpability cannot be compared with that of the “deciders,” that is, those who actually fix and implement policy.
This is astonishingly fallacious legal and ethical reasoning, doubly so because it flows from the pen of the highly respected dean of one of the nation’s premier law schools.
In response to this “legal uprising,” David Addington and Alberto Gonzales decided to task John Yoo to prepare memoranda. These memoranda were commissioned with two purposes in mind. First, to protect the policymakers who had authorized torture techniques from future criminal liability (something which Gonzales had identified as early as January 2002 as a serious prospect). And second, to wield the Attorney General’s opinion powers to silence lawyers who had correctly evaluated the legal framework.
Both of these purposes were wrongful, and inconsistent with the proper use of the Attorney General’s opinion power. Criminal investigators may well conclude that this act joined John Yoo in a joint criminal enterprise with the persons who devised and pushed implementation of the torture policies.
Indeed, this is not entirely a speculative matter. We will shortly learn in the mass media that some prosecutors have already reached that conclusion and that the preparation of a criminal case is underway.
A criminal indictment would render a movement to get Yoo fired kinda moot. I just wanta see him get his kim chee settled one way or another.
Mr. Horton must be a lawyer, 'cuz the article goes on and on. And on...
Interesting, though. Go read.
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