The Yoo arguments

Re “Lowering the bar?” Opinion, April 9

What Chapman University School of Law Dean John C. Eastman doesn’t differentiate is that, while visiting professor John Yoo’s positions on torture are debatable, Yoo was not invited solely to debate his legal advice to the Bush administration, but to instruct potential lawyers in contextual and practical application of the law.

Although working backward from a policy and subsequently finding a scrap of argument to enforce it is not completely uncommon in government, Yoo has taken it to a new level. Similarly, a workmanlike sculpture crafted in fecal matter could be called art.

Eastman has succeeded in at least one likely commitment, revealed or not. Although the trustees might applaud his publicizing Chapman’s law school, I would suggest there are more legitimate methods of achieving that goal.

Bruce McAdams

Santa Barbara

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In his defense of Yoo, Eastman argues that Yoo’s presence at Chapman has “provoked a strong and thoughtful discourse” on Yoo’s legal positions, including his endorsement of torture. But Yoo’s arguments construct legal justifications for acts that are morally and ethically indefensible.

The idea that legal arguments can make a barbaric practice palatable is abhorrent. So what’s the next topic for “strong and thoughtful discourse” at Chapman -- wife-beating? Public flogging? Racial purity laws? Surely Yoo could find legal reasoning to defend these, given sufficient incentive.

Elizabeth M. Guthrie

Irvine

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Although I vehemently disagree with Yoo’s reasoning and legal conclusions as reported in the media, I am taken aback by the concept that an attorney giving a legal opinion to a client (in this case, the White House or the government) should be subject to governmental or academic action of any kind by those who disagree with his opinions.

If his opinions are wrong or rejected by a majority of fair-minded people, the marketplace of ideas should deal with Yoo. To suggest, as Professor Lawrence Rosenthal did in his Op-Ed article, that Yoo should not be allowed to teach at a law school just because one may disagree with his opinions is as insidious an idea as any advocated by Yoo.

Jay J. Plotkin

Studio City