Law professors make the news as students return to school

Yesterday, the Blog of Legal Times reported that Dawn Johnsen, President Obama’s nominee to head the DOJ’s Office of Legal Counsel, will “teach a seminar this fall at Indiana University’s Maurer School of Law. She will commute weekly from Washington to Bloomington, Ind., while she continues to wait for confirmation, said Debbie O’Leary, a spokeswoman for the law school.”

Meanwhile four people were arrested for protesting law professor John Yoo’s return to the University of California Berkeley Boalt Hall School of Law. Yoo, author of the infamous torture memos, was Deputy Assistant Attorney General in the Office of Legal Counsel – the office that is still lacking a leader because of Dawn Johnsen’s stalled nomination.

According to the AP, “Christopher Edley Jr., Berkeley's law school dean, has rejected calls to dismiss Yoo, saying the university doesn't have the resources to investigate his Justice Department work, which involved classified intelligence.”

For very different reasons, neither Professor Johnsen nor Professor Yoo should be back in the classroom this fall. Attorney General Holder needs to call for a full-scale investigation of the torture memos so that we can discover what, if any, action should be taken against Yoo, and the Senate needs to confirm Dawn Johnsen to head the DOJ’s Office of Legal Counsel so that the department can get back on track.