About this item
In Defender in Chief, celebrated constitutional scholar John Yoo makes a provocative case against Donald Trump's alleged disruption of constitutional rules and norms.Donald Trump isn't shredding the Constitution -- he's its greatest defender.Ask any liberal -- and many moderate conservatives -- and they'll tell you that Donald Trump is a threat to the rule of law and the U.S. Constitution. Mainstream media outlets have reported fresh examples of alleged executive overreach or authoritarian White House decisions nearly every day of his presidency. In the 2020 primaries, the candidates have rushed to accuse Trump of destroying our democracy and jeopardizing our nation's very existence.Yoo argues that this charge has things exactly backwards. Far from considering Trump an inherent threat to our nation's founding principles, Yoo convincingly argues that Washington, Jefferson, Madison and Hamilton would have seen Trump as returning to their vision of presidential power, even at his most controversial.
About the Author
John Yoo is Emanuel S. Heller Professor of Law at the University of California, Berkeley. He is also a visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University and a visiting scholar at the American Enterprise Institute.Yoo clerked for Justice Clarence Thomas of the U.S. Supreme Court. He served as general counsel of the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee from 1995-96. From 2001 to 2003, he served as a deputy assistant attorney general in the Office of Legal Counsel at the U.S. Department of Justice, where he worked on issues involving foreign affairs, national security and the separation of powers.He received his B.A., summa cum laude, in American history from Harvard University. Between college and law school, he worked as a newspaper reporter in Washington, D.C. He received his J.D. from Yale Law School, where he was an articles editor of the Yale Law Journal. Yoo has published articles about foreign affairs, international law and constitutional law in the nation's leading law journals. He has also contributed to the editorial pages of the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune, and the Philadelphia Inquirer.He is co-host of the Lawtalk podcast on the Ricochet network and the Pacific Century podcast at the Hoover Institution.
