John Yoo was a deputy assistant attorney general in the Office of Legal Counsel of the U.S. Department of Justice on the day of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. He led the Department’s work on the most sensitive national security programs for the next two years. He also served as general counsel of the Senate Judiciary Committee and as a law clerk for Justice Clarence Thomas of the U.S. Supreme Court and Judge Laurence Silberman of the D.C. Circuit.

Yoo currently serves as a professor of law at the University of California at Berkeley and a visiting scholar at the American Enterprise Institute. He is the author, most recently, of Crisis and Command: A History of Executive Power from George Washington to George W. Bush. He wrote about his experience in the Justice Department fighting terrorism inWar by Other Means, and about foreign affairs and national security in The Powers of War and Peace.

Yoo has published more than 70 scholarly articles on foreign affairs, national security, and constitutional law. He has also contributed to the editorial pages of The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, The Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times and the Philadelphia Inquirer. He has spoken at many of the nation’s leading colleges and universities and before many civic and legal groups.

Professor Yoo graduated from Yale Law School, where he was an articles editor of the Yale Law Journal, and summa cum laude from Harvard College with a degree in American history.

If you'd like to bring in John Yoo as your next keynote speaker, please fill out the "Request More Information" form on the right.