Yoo’s Job in Jeopardy?

The institutionalizing of torture by John Yoo is not sitting well with the National Lawyer’s Guild. Yoo narrowed the legal definition of torture in his infamous Torture Memos to exempt most methods. According to the Guild:

Yoo’s definition contravenes the definition in the Convention Against Torture, a treaty the US has ratified which is thus part of the US law under the Constitution’s Supremacy Clause. Yoo said self-defense or necessity could be used as a defense to war crimes prosecutions for torture, notwithstanding the Torture Convention’s absolute prohibition against torture in all circumstances, even in wartime. This memo and another Yoo wrote with Jay Bybee in August 2002 provided the basis for the Administration’s torture of prisoners.

The Guild is calling for the former Justice Department lawyer’s dismissal from the University of California, Berkeley, Law School. The group was founded in 1937 as a human rights bar organization.