Dear University of California Vice Provost Sheldon Zedek, Chancellor Robert Birgeneau, and

Berkeley Law Dean Christopher Edley:

We, the undersigned students of Berkeley Law, write to petition the University of California and
Berkeley Law School to initiate an investigation into whether Professor John Yoo’s “outside
professional conduct,” as an attorney of the U.S. Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel
(OLC), violated the UC Faculty Code of Conduct, as set out in the University of California
Academic Personnel Manual (Section 015).

In his work for the OLC, while a tenured member of the faculty, Professor Yoo was the principal
author of several memoranda that attempted to provide legal justification for the torture of military
detainees, in contravention of the absolute prohibition on torture codified in both domestic and
international law. Additionally, Professor Yoo’s legal opinions led to the approval of the president’s
Surveillance Program, which enabled the violation of U.S. citizens’ constitutional rights
through illegal warrantless wiretapping. The Justice Department has subsequently withdrawn
several of Professor Yoo’s memoranda, acknowledging their poor reasoning and untenable legal
conclusions.

In light of this record, we are left to draw one of two conclusions: Professor Yoo employed
unconscionably poor legal reasoning in good faith, or he intentionally sought to subvert the law. As
an institution of higher learning, and as a professional school that seeks to model ethical
professional behavior for the next generation of lawyers, both should be of serious concern to
Berkeley Law, especially given the gravity of the consequences of Professor Yoo’s actions: torture,
illegal detention, and death.

Investigating whether Professor Yoo violated the Faculty Code of Conduct is amply justified by the
available public record. If UC finds that it is unable to open an investigation or lacks sufficient
information, it has a duty to confirm publicly on what grounds this decision is based, including what
standards it is applying and what information or evidence it lacks. While Dean Edley and
Chancellor Birgeneau have indicated that UC may not discipline Yoo until he has been convicted of
illegal activity, the Faculty Code of Conduct indicates otherwise. While the code includes criminal
conviction among “examples of types of unacceptable faculty behavior which are subject to
University discipline,” it explicitly notes that these examples are “not exhaustive.”

Academic freedom is essential to the integrity of any university, but it is irrelevant to the case at
hand. John Yoo wrote these memoranda not as a law professor offering an academic opinion, but as
a government attorney providing counsel to the president of the United States. His actions were not
an exercise of academic freedom of speech but rather professional misconduct, if not criminal
activity.

As members of the Berkeley Law community and as current and future legal practitioners, we are
compelled to speak out against the conduct of Professor John Yoo and other government lawyers
who authorized illegal acts of torture and the violation of civil and human rights. We respectfully
call for an immediate inquiry by the University.

Sincerely,