JONATHAN TURLEY
BIOGRAPHICAL INFORMATION
Professor Jonathan Turley is a nationally recognized legal scholar who has written extensively in areas ranging from constitutional law to legal theory to tort law. He has written over three dozen academic articles that have appeared in a variety of leading law journals at Cornell, Duke, Georgetown, Harvard, Northwestern, University of Chicago, and other schools.
After a stint at Tulane Law School, Professor Turley joined the George Washington faculty in 1990 and, in 1998, was given the prestigious Shapiro Chair for Public Interest Law, the youngest chaired professor in the school’s history. In addition to his extensive publications, Professor Turley has served as counsel in some of the most notable cases in the last two decades including the representation of whistleblowers, military personnel, judges, members of Congress, and a wide range of other clients. He is also one of the few attorneys to successfully challenge both a federal and a state law — leading to courts striking down the federal Elizabeth Morgan law as well as the state criminalization of cohabitation.
In 2010, Professor Turley represented Judge G. Thomas Porteous in his impeachment trial. After a trial before the Senate, Professor Turley (on December 7, 2010) argued both the motions and gave the final argument to all 100 U.S. Senators from the well of the Senate floor — only the 14th time in history of the country that such a trial of a judge has reached the Senate floor. Judge Porteous was convicted of four articles of impeachments, including the acceptance of $2000 from an attorney and using a false name on a bankruptcy filing.
In 2011, Professor Turley filed a challenge to the Libyan War on behalf of ten members of Congress, including Representatives Roscoe Bartlett (R., Md); Dan Burton (R., Ind.); Mike Capuano (D., Mass.); Howard Coble (R., N.C.); John Conyers (D., Mich.); John J. Duncan (R., Tenn.); Tim Johnson (R., Ill.); Walter Jones (R., N.C.); Dennis Kucinich (D., Ohio); and Ron Paul (R., Tx). The lawsuit was before the United States District Court for the District of Columbia.
In November 2014, Turley agreed to serve as lead counsel to the United States House of Representatives in its constitutional challenge to changes ordered by President Obama to the Affordable Care Act. The litigation was approved by the House of Representatives to seek judicial review of the claims under the separation of powers. On May 12, 2016, the federal court handed down a historic victory for the House and ruled that the Obama Administration violated the separation of powers in ordering billions to be paid to insurance companies without an appropriation of Congress.
Other cases include his representation of the Area 51 workers at a secret air base in Nevada; the nuclear couriers at Oak Ridge, Tennessee; the Rocky Flats grand jury in Colorado; Dr. Eric Foretich, the husband in the famous Elizabeth Morgan custody controversy; and four former United States Attorneys General during the Clinton impeachment litigation. In the Foretich case, Turley succeeded recently in reversing a trial court and striking down a federal statute through a rare “bill of attainder” challenge. Professor Turley has also served as counsel in a variety of national security cases, including espionage cases like that of Jim Nicholson, the highest ranking CIA officer ever accused of espionage. Turley also served as lead defense counsel in the successful defense of Petty Officer Daniel King, who faced the death penalty for alleged spying for Russia. Turley also served as defense counsel in the case of Dr. Tom Butler, who is faced criminal charges dealing with the importation and handling of thirty vials of plague in Texas. He also served as counsel to Larry Hanauer, the House Intelligence Committee staffer accused of leaking a classified Presidential National Intelligence Estimate to the New York Times. (Hanauer was cleared of all allegations).
Among his current cases, Professor Turley represents Dr. Ali Al-Timimi, who was convicted in Virginia in 2005 of violent speech against the United States. In 2020, the federal court found that there merit in the challenges raised by Professor Turley and his co-counsel Tom Huff. Accordingly, the judge ordered his release to protect him from Covit-19 while the Court prepared a decision on the challenges. Pursuant to a court order, Dr. Al-Timimi was released from the Supermax in Colorado and the two drove across the country so that he could be placed into home confinement. He also represented Dr. Sami Al-Arian, who was accused of being the American leader of a terrorist organization while he was a university professor in Florida. Turley represented Dr. Al-Arian for eight years, much of which was in a determined defense against an indictment for criminal contempt. The case centered on the alleged violation of a plea bargain by the Justice Department after Dr. Al-Arian was largely exonerated of terrorism charges in Tampa, Florida. On June 27, 2014, all charges were dropped against Dr. Al-Arian. He also represented pilots approaching or over the age of 60 in their challenge to the mandatory retirement age of the FAA. He also represented David Murphee Faulk, the whistleblower who disclosed abuses in the surveillance operations at NSA’s Fort Gordon facility in Georgia.
Professor Turley also agreed to serve as lead counsel representing the Brown family from the TLC “Sister Wives, a reality show on plural marriage or polygamy. On December 13, 2013, the federal court in Utah struck down the criminalization of polygamy — the first such decision in history — on free exercise and due process grounds. On September 26, 2014, the court also ruled in favor of the Browns under Section 1983 — giving them a clean sweep on all of the statutory and constitutional claims. In April 2015, a panel reversed the decision on standing grounds and that decision is now on appeal.
Professor Turley was also lead counsel in the World Bank protest case stemming from the mass arrest of people in 2002 by the federal and district governments during demonstrations of the IMF and World Bank. Turley and his co-lead counsel Dan Schwartz (and the law firm of Bryan Cave) were the first to file and represented student journalists arrested without probable cause. In April 2015, after 13 years of intense litigation, the case was settled for $2.8 million, including $115,000 for each arrestee — a record damage award in a case of this kind and over twice the amount of prior damages for individual protesters. The case also exposed government destruction and withholding of evidence as well as the admitted mass arrest of hundreds of people without probable cause.
Professor Turley also served as the legal expert in the review of polygamy laws in the British of Columbia (Canada) Supreme Court. In the latter case, he argued for the decriminalization of plural union and conjugal unions. In 2012, Turley also represented the makers of “Five Wives Vodka” (Ogden’s Own Distillery) in challenging an effective ban on the product in Idaho after officials declared the product to be offensive to Mormons. After opposing to the ban on free speech and other grounds, the state of Idaho issued a letter apologizing for public statements made by officials and lifting the ban on sale for “Five Wives Vodka.”
Turley has served as a consultant on homeland security and constitutional issues, including the Florida House of Representatives. He also served as the consultant to the Puerto Rico House of Representatives on the impeachment of Gov. Aníbal Acevedo Vilá.
Professor Turley is a frequent witness before the House and Senate on constitutional and statutory issues as well as tort reform legislation. That testimony includes the confirmation hearings of Attorney General nominees Loretta Lynch and William Barr as well as Supreme Court nominee Neil Gorsuch. Professor Turley is also a nationally recognized legal commentator. Professor Turley was ranked as 38th in the top 100 most cited “public intellectuals” in the recent study by Judge Richard Posner. Turley was also found to be the second most cited law professor in the country. He has been repeatedly ranked in the nation’s top 500 lawyers in annual surveys (including in the latest rankings by LawDragon) – one of only a handful of academics. In prior years, he was ranked as one of the nation’s top ten lawyers in military law cases as well as one of the top 40 lawyers under 40. He was also selected in the last five years as one of the 100 top Irish lawyers in the world. In 2016, he was ranked as one of the 100 most famous (past and present) law professors.
Professor Turley is one of only two academics to testify at both the Clinton and Trump impeachment hearings. In December 2019, Professor Turley was called as the one Republican witness in the House Judiciary Committee impeachment hearings. He appeared with three Democratic witnesses. Professor Turley disagreed with this fellow witnesses in opposing the proposed articles of impeachments on bribery, extortion, campaign finance violations or obstruction of justice. He argued that these alleged impeachable acts were at odds with controlling definitions of those crimes and that Congress has historically looked to the criminal code and cases for guidance on such allegations. The committee ultimately rejected those articles and adopted the only two articles that Professor Turley said could be legitimately advanced: abuse of power, obstruction of Congress. Chairman Jerrold Nadler even ended the hearing by quoting his position on abuse of power. However, Turley opposed impeachment on this record as incomplete and insufficient for submission to the Senate. He argued for the House to wait and complete the record by seeking to compel key witnesses like former National Security Adviser John Bolton. His testimony was later relied upon in the impeachment floor debate by various House members and he was cited by both the White House and House managers in their arguments before the United States Senate in the Trump impeachment trial, including videotaped remarks played at the trial.
Professor Turley’s articles on legal and policy issues appear regularly in national publications with hundreds of articles in such newspapers as the New York Times, Washington Post, USA Today, Los Angeles Times and Wall Street Journal. He is a columnist for USA Today and writes regularly for the Washington Post. In 2005, Turley was given the Columnist of the Year award for Single-Issue Advocacy for his columns on civil liberties by the Aspen Institute and the Week Magazine. Professor Turley also appears regularly as a legal expert on all of the major television networks. Since the 1990s, he has worked under contract as the on-air Legal Analyst for NBC News, CBS News, BBC and Fox News. Professor Turley has been a repeated guest on Sunday talk shows with over two-dozen appearances on Meet the Press, ABC This Week, Face the Nation, and Fox Sunday. Professor Turley has taught courses on constitutional law, constitutional criminal law, environmental law, litigation, and torts. He is the founder and executive director of the Project for Older Prisoners (POPS). His work with older prisoners has been honored in various states, including his selection as the 2011 recipient of the Dr. Mary Ann Quaranta Elder Justice Award at Fordham University.
His award-winning blog is routinely ranked as one of the most popular legal blogs by AVVO. His blog was selected as the top News/Analysis site in 2013, the top Legal Opinion Blog in 2011 as well as prior selections as the top Law Professor Blog and Legal Theory Blog. It was also ranked in the top 20 constitutional law blog in 2018. It has been regularly ranked by the ABA Journal in the top 100 blogs in the world. In 2012, Turley has selected as one of the top 20 legal experts on Twitter by Business Insider. In 2013, the ABA Journal inducted the Turley Blog into its Hall of Fame.
Professor Turley received his B.A. at the University of Chicago and his J.D. at Northwestern. In 2008, he was given an honorary Doctorate of Law from John Marshall Law School for his contributions to civil liberties and the public interest.
For further information: Mr. Seth Tate – 202-994-0537
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Monday, July 31, 2008
JON VOIGHT: My concerns for America
OP-ED
We, as parents, are well aware of the importance of our teachers who teach and program our children. We also know how important it is for our children to play with good-thinking children growing up.
Sen. Barack Obama has grown up with the teaching of very angry, militant white and black people: the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Louis Farrakhan, William Ayers and Rev. Michael Pfleger. We cannot say we are not affected by teachers who are militant and angry. We know too well that we become like them, and Mr. Obama will run this country in their mindset.
The Democratic Party, in its quest for power, has managed a propaganda campaign with subliminal messages, creating a God-like figure in a man who falls short in every way. It seems to me that if Mr. Obama wins the presidential election, then Messrs. Farrakhan, Wright, Ayers and Pfleger will gain power for their need to demoralize this country and help create a socialist America.
The Democrats have targeted young people, knowing how easy it is to bring forth whatever is needed to program their minds. I know this process well. I was caught up in the hysteria during the Vietnam era, which was brought about through Marxist propaganda underlying the so-called peace movement. The radicals of that era were successful in giving the communists power to bring forth the killing fields and slaughter 2.5 million people in Cambodia and South Vietnam. Did they stop the war, or did they bring the war to those innocent people? In the end, they turned their backs on all the horror and suffering they helped create and walked away.
Those same leaders who were in the streets in the ’60s are very powerful today in their work to bring down the Iraq war and to attack our president, and they have found their way into our schools. William Ayers is a good example of that.
Thank God, today, we have a strong generation of young soldiers who know exactly who they are and what they must do to protect our freedom and our democracy. And we have the leadership of Gen. David Petraeus, who has brought hope and stability to Iraq and prevented the terrorists from establishing a base in that country. Our soldiers are lifting us to an example of patriotism at a time when we’ve almost forgotten who we are and what is at stake.
If Mr. Obama had his way, he would have pulled our troops from Iraq years ago and initiated an unprecedented bloodbath, turning over that country to the barbarianism of our enemies. With what he has openly stated about his plans for our military, and his lack of understanding about the true nature of our enemies, there’s not a cell in my body that can accept the idea that Mr. Obama can keep us safe from the terrorists around the world, and from Iran, which is making great strides toward getting the atomic bomb. And while a misleading portrait of Mr. Obama is being perpetrated by a media controlled by the Democrats, the Obama camp has sent out people to attack the greatness of Sen. John McCain, whose suffering and courage in a Hanoi prison camp is an American legend.
Gen. Wesley Clark, who himself has shame upon him, having been relieved of his command, has done their bidding and become a lying fool in his need to demean a fellow soldier and a true hero.
This is a perilous time, and more than ever, the world needs a united and strong America. If, God forbid, we live to see Mr. Obama president, we will live through a socialist era that America has not seen before, and our country will be weakened in every way.
WELL SAID JON VOIGHT!!!!!!!!!!
That “religion” Satan formed is called Zionism.
If the guardians of marta h and percy ever gave consent for these two to get “hitched”, they’d better get ready to apologize to Dr. Turley because they’ll need him to stop the State from sterilizing them so they can’t breed.
I guess I should give up my day job doing “satire” for the New Yorker.
PS again, many believe Satan formed a religion over a lake of oil in that region to mess with God’s wonderful creation. What do you think?
Pulease – talk about LUNAtics!
zakimar: Much of the new oil would be available in 1 to 3 years, with some not coming online for 5 at most. The point is we know where it is and how to get it.
PS. Every barrel of oil we produce ourselves is $120 we don’t have to send to scum of the earth low lifes barely out of the stone age that are using it to kill civilians without a care in the world.
PS again, many believe Satan formed a religion over a lake of oil in that region to mess with God’s wonderful creation. What do you think?
By conservative estimates it will be over five years before there is any oil from this new drilling. I know you probably have your grade six math, so 100% of 0 is 0. So if 1 gallon was saved, by the entire country, in the next five years, that would be more than all the oil that has been drilled. And since you’re such an educated fellow, perhaps you can find Czechoslovakia and the Iraq/Pakistan border on a map and show it to Senior McCain/Bush III.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XzZNP4tTfV0
Get This Man A Teleprompter!
Barack Obama is a lot like Sean Penn or George Clooney. If you give him a script, he can deliver it pretty well. But if he tries to talk without a script that has been written for him by others, he quickly reveals that he is poorly-informed if not downright ignorant.
Today he delivered another classic, by claiming that if only we would all properly inflate our tires, we could save as much gasoline as “all the oil that they’re talking about getting off drilling.”
The stunned silence with which the crowd greets this howler suggests that most Americans have a more practical understanding of energy consumption than Obama.
Just for fun, I did the math. Properly inflating your tires can improve gas mileage by 3%. Of course, many people already keep their tires properly inflated, and many more are at least close to being properly inflated. Let’s be generous and assume that one-half of the total possible savings would be realized if we all inflated our tires properly; that’s a net gain of 1.5% fuel efficiency.
Americans drive approximately 2,880 billion miles per year. If we average 24 mpg, we use around 120 billion gallons of gasoline in our vehicles. If, through perfect tire inflation, we improved our collective fuel efficiency by 1.5%, that would be 1.8 billion gallons. A barrel of oil produces around 20 gallons of gasoline, so the total savings available through tire inflation is approximately 90,000,000 barrels of oil annually.
How does this stack up against “all the oil that they’re talking about getting off drilling?”
ANWR: 10 billion barrels
Outer Continental Shelf: 18 billion barrels (estimated; the actual total is undoubtedly much higher, since exploration has been banned)
Oil shale: 1 trillion barrels
So, on the above assumptions, it would take only 11,308 years of proper tire inflation to equal “all the oil that they’re talking about getting off drilling.”
Obama is a curious case. He gives the impression of being an intelligent guy, but through his unscripted comments we have learned that he knows little about history, science or mathematics. He also seems rather shockingly short on common sense, as this most recent gaffe illustrates.
zakimar:
I can’t tell you how happy I get when I see Mr. Turley on “Countdown” with Keith Olbermann, and lately, a few times on “Verdict” with Dan Abrams. My husband also enjoys watching him. Mr. Turley is such a smart and learned scholar! Like I posted before–I have written a suggestion to Barack Obama’s campaign website that Mr. Turley should be considered as a nominee to the Supreme Court when Obama becomes President. I can’t think of anyone else who could do the job as well as Mr. Turley, and I do hope he IS chosen, should the situation arise.
And yes, martha, this is ME, Mary Leon (that’s my real name) so don’t accuse me of being an alter-ego of Mr. Turley. Also, if you can’t say anything nice about Mr. Turley at his own website, just don’t say anything at all! 🙁
Hello Mary; I can see how marta h confused me with the good Doctor. We are both articulate, educated, sane men who seem to feel that somehow EVERYONE is entitled to human rights and dignity even though Americans and Israelis are the only people deserving of God’s love on the planet. I’m sure Dr. Turley is also an excellent father to his wonderful and fortunate children and a great husband to his beautiful wife, as well as being quite handsome himself. The main difference between me and Dr. Turley is that he is more educated than I and I am less humble.
martha h:
How many times must you come here and think that we are not who we say we are? Mr. Turley must get quite a laugh when he reads your ‘cut and paste’ blather and your crazy ideas that he is the only person who is posting responses to you by using various aliases. 🙂
To put it bluntly–you must be a white woman who gets paid as a Troll for the Repub party, because you are acting like a Troll, and acting like a typical white person who thinks she is better than everyone else just because of her skin color. People like you disgust me because you have had all the ‘breaks’ and made all the rules, and yet you can’t stand the thought of someone else getting a piece of the American dream–especially someone who is not ‘lilywhite’ like you!
And as for me ‘whining’, yes I will ‘whine’ when either my husband or myself are called traitors, terrorists and unpatriotic, but I won’t back down or let anyone, especially the likes of YOU, step all over me.
But as far as you; you have NO excuse for coming here, cutting and pasting your right-wing tripe. I guess you DO like that I cut and paste your tripe and send it out to my liberal friends, or else why would you keep coming back here? Unless you like to ‘spin’???
Zakimar: Give it up. We know you are Turley and one of his alter egos he uses.
I would have responded sooner but I fainted when I read that martha h had something nice to say about any SANE person. I take being compared to Dr. Turley as a compliment.
Mary Leon, you are quite the whiner yourself. I would rank your whining right up there with “Zakimer”, alias JT.
mary leon:
Zakimar is just another one of JT’s most recent alter-egos trying to bait someone into making some “biased” statement here.
I can’t believe you are falling for it…….wait…..yes I can.
zakimar:
I don’t wish to leave my home country just yet.
I am supporting Obama because he can turn this country around. It’s true that Clinton left over a $200 Billion surplus for Bush to waste, but we are so much in debt now it’s going to take YEARS to even balance the budget, let alone have a spending surplus.
I know the National Debt is AT LEAST $5 TRILLION and that by the time Bush is out of office and after all the debts are added up for the Invasion of Iraq and the tax breaks for the rich and for the money we owe to Saudi Arabia and China on loans Bush took from them, then the National Debt will be OVER $10 TRILLION!
Obama will be busy enough trying to find out what Bush has done to us; by way of his presidential directives and his hundreds of signing statements. These past 7+ years of Bush signing away our rights and freedoms and selling the country out; there are literally thousands of papers to go thru and Millions of e-mails to go through (that is, if there are any left after Bush had papers shredded and e-mails permanently deleted).
The LAST thing on anyone’s list will be getting a budget surplus.
That’s why I hope you don’t donate one Penny to McCain’s campaign! His wife is worth over $100 Million, due to the fact that she is an heiress of a beer delivery dynasty, so he doesn’t need any more campaign contributions, as far as I’m concerned.
BUT, if McCain does win, then I’m going to Mexico. My husband was born there and I’ve been married to him almost 29 years. (This is another story for another day; but let me just say that since he is dark-skinned and speaks with a foreign accent he has been the victim of racial slurs by white people, who have accused him of being a member of al-Quaida and being a terrorist, and I have been accused of being married to an enemy of the US and I’m a traitor to this country, etc…) I have TONS of stories on how I and him have been treated, but I will say that the more my husband and I have been insulted, the more my husband and I stick together and Love each other! 🙂
Hello Mary Leon; McCain is NOT the lesser of the two evils, as far as I’m concerned he is even more evil than Bush Jr. Bush Jr. is just a privileged coward that doesn’t know what war is, however McCain doesn’t have that excuse. In spite (or maybe because) of McCain’s “experience”, he still craves war and has voted against every bill to spend money on veterans. That is precisely why I wrote the following above:
I’m torn on Obama vs. McCain. On the one hand, Obama like Clinton could turn the Republican deficit into a surplus and perhaps get a settlement for Palestine and Israel. On the other hand eight more years of Bush – I mean McCain and a war with Iran which is four times larger than and has more than double the population of Iraq as well as possessing many more sophisticated weapons could very well be what bankrupts the US, demoralizes what is left of the armed forces and leaves them unable to dominate the world.
So I’m giving money to McCain because I feel he’ll be Rome’s Nero, France’s Louis XVI or the Third Reich’s Hitler and leave the US unable to make war in the future. Every president in recent history has attacked a Muslim country including Clinton (who did it to get the media focus away from Lewinsky) at least Bush Jr., who did it for oil and the big US corporations also managed to remove Hussein. I doubt that Obama will any different.
McCain will need the draft and between that and the huge US debt and the number of people that will be left without jobs or homes, there will either be another American Revolution (or at least thousands of riots all over the country) or the economy will collapse and the US will no longer be able to export billions of dollars and weapons to Israel and terror throughout the world. Obama will just delay the process as did Clinton. I’m just sorry good people will have to die in the short term and that you’ll be living there when all that happens. I would suggest to all decent Americans, if McCain wins, start applying for your travel/work Visas to Canada and the EU.
zakimar:
Thanks for the kind words.
I really do hope you change your mind about McCain and see that with Obama there is at least a Chance to get out of Iraq and not even get in Iran.
Remember the old saying: “Be careful what you wish for. You may just get it”. (My translation: McCain may seem to be the lesser of two evils, but I would much rather take my chances with Barack Obama than to keep the McCain war machine going; because all this war machine will bring is more death and destruction to Innocent people who have done nothing to us).
I always say a prayer every night, for our US troops and for the Innocent Iraqi citizens that have been killed, that they will rest in peace for eternity, and that we shall all be together one day in Heaven.
Mary Leon; You are one of the few people on this blog that I sadly say seems to intelligent for most of the others who seem to be imbeciles. But if you don’t mind spending the time contributing, I’ll keep spending the time reading your stuff. Unlike some others (who will remain as nameless as they are soulless, I enjoy reading stuff that I may disagree with, as long as it’s factual and polite. Keep up the good work.
The latest news from Iraq:
New bombings kill dozens.
Yep, that “surge” is working, NOT.
It seems as though every time John McCain opens his mouth and shouts that the “surge” is a Success that there is another bombing in Iraq.
I believe the two are connected. Maybe if McCain keeps quiet for a few days, there will be no bombings in Iraq? But, unfortunately, McCain is all mouth and no exit strategy…
Oh, wait, he does have an exit strategy. Every six months from now until the end of time he will say that the “surge” is working, Iraq is more safer, but we still can’t leave Iraq because of ‘conditions on the ground.’
Barack Obama’s solution: get out of Iraq and go after the real al-Quaida of September 11th in Afghanistan, and get Pakistan to force Osama bin Laden and his gang out of their caves.
John McCain’s solution: stay in Iraq until either the ‘conditions on the ground’ are absolutely safe (which they will never be, as long as we occupy Iraq) or until every last person in Iraq is DEAD.
You are obviously a Zionist Jew, and Zionism is Apartheid which is Racism and should be hated by all decent people. No person is better than any other and should be given special rights in this life or the next solely based on their race.
Unfortunately, some races, religions and groups believe in hate and Zionists belong to this group. I am not surprised that many Americans and the US Government sees nothing wrong with Zionism because many Americans have no regard for their own indigenous people (that’s Injins to those that don’t know what indigenous is), didn’t oppose Apartheid in South Africa and until a few months ago had Nelson Mandela on their terrorist list for decades.
Both the US and Israel were founded on the slaughter and oppression of the indigenous people and both had “founding fathers” that were racist. Most in the US even had slaves and some even raped their slaves. If your God blesses those sorts of people, his actual name is Satan.