John Choon Yoo is the Emanuel S. Heller Professor of Law, Co-Faculty Director of the Korea Law Center, Director of the Public Law and Policy Program, and Director of California Constitution Center at Berkeley Law School at the University of California at Berkeley; Visiting Scholar at the American Enterprise Institute; and a Visiting Fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University. He received his J.D. from Yale Law School.
He is the author of the books Defender-in-Chief: Trump’s Fight for Presidential Power; Striking Power: How Cyber, Robots, and Space Weapons Change the Rules for War; Point of Attack: Preventive War, International Law, and Global Welfare; and Crisis and Command: A History of Executive Power from George Washington to George Bush.
Professor Yoo has published more than 100 articles in academic journals on subjects including national security, constitutional law, international law, and the Supreme Court. He also regularly contributes to the editorial pages of the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, and National Review, among others.
He has served in all three branches of the federal government. He was an official in the U.S. Department of Justice, where he worked on national security and terrorism issues after the 9/11 attacks. He served as general counsel of the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee. He has been a law clerk for Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas and federal appeals Judge Laurence Silberman. He has also been a visiting professor at Seoul National University in South Korea, the Interdisciplinary Center in Israel, Keio University in Japan, Trento University in Italy, the University of Chicago, and the Free University of Amsterdam.
He also serves on the boards of the Pacific Legal Foundation, Federalist Society’s Separation of Powers and Federalism Division, the Universidad Cientifica del Sur Law School, and the Asia-Pacific Law Institute at Seoul National University.
