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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Toby, (alias ZAKIMAR), stop messing with Mary Leon! She is obviously unbalanced and it isn’t right to yank her chain anymore!
McCain is going to get $2 per gallon gasoline by signing an exclusive contract with Czechoslovakia for oil and he will make sure not a single US troop is ever killed because they’ll all be stationed at the Iraq/Pakistan border.
Al-Sadr Plans to Turn Militia Into Civic Organization
Monday, August 04, 2008
Anti-American Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr is planning to disarm the Mahdi Army by turning the militia into a civic and social service organization, a significant strategic shift, according to a report by the Associated Press.
In a brochure obtained by the paper and confirmed by Sheikh Salah al-Obeidi, Sadr’s chief spokesman, the Mahdi Army will now be guided by Shiite spirituality instead of anti-American militancy.
The move could further enhance the stability of Iraq. The brochure states the al-Mumahidoon will undergo an intellectual and scientific jihad focusing on education, religion and social justice.
“[The army] is not allowed to use arms at all,” the brochure reportedly says.
The al-Mumahidoon office will be separated into sections, including religion, education, social services and information. Posters bearing the indicating a new direction for the Mahdi Army have been put up in some areas of Baghdad.
“All the Mahdi Army must listen to this and follow this new office, which will have the name al-Mumahidoon,” Obeidi told the paper. ” We are also thinking that our work must focus on guiding and enlightening the people to serve Iraqi society.”
August 4, 2008
The Dishonesty of Barack Obama
Barack Obama gave a major speech on energy in Michigan today, in which he offered a number of new proposals to try to bring down the cost of gasoline. Over the next day or so, I intend to take a careful look at Obama’s new energy strategy. For now, though, a quick comment about Obama’s proposal to sell a portion of the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. Obama said:
We should sell 70 million barrels of oil from our Strategic Petroleum Reserve for less expensive crude, which in the past has lowered gas prices within two weeks.
This is, of course, another policy reversal on Obama’s part. Until now, he has opposed selling gasoline from the Reserve. His spokeswoman acknowledged as much:
Previously, Obama opposed tapping into the reserve, but campaign spokeswoman Heather Zichal said he reconsidered because “Americans are suffering.”
Now, I have no problem with a politician changing his mind when conditions change. Thus, I’d be delighted to see John McCain reverse himself on ANWR, on the ground that $4 gasoline demands measures that $2 gasoline doesn’t. This is the sort of rationale implied by Ms. Zichal.
But Obama’s opposition to selling petroleum from the Reserve is not some relic of the days of cheap oil. It was reiterated on July 7, in St. Louis:
I do not believe that we should use the strategic oil reserves at this point. I have said and, in fact, supported a congressional resolution that said that we should suspend putting more oil into the strategic oil reserve, but the strategic oil reserve, I think, has to be reserved for a genuine emergency. You have a situation, let’s say, where there was a major oil facility in Saudi Arabia that was destroyed as a consequence of terrorist acts, and you suddenly had huge amounts of oil taken out of the world market, we wouldn’t just be seeing $4-a-gallon oil. We could see a situation where entire sectors of the country had no oil to function at all. And that’s what the strategic oil reserve has to be for.
On July 7, oil and gas prices were higher than they are today, not lower. So Obama’s explanation that he changed his mind because “Americans are suffering” is transparently false. What has really happened is that Obama has been reading the polls, as always: John McCain has caught up with him, and poll respondents now say that they trust McCain more on energy. Hence the new policies that Obama unveiled today.
More to come.
Toby, alias ZAKIMAR, stop messing with Mary Leon! She is obviously unbalanced and it isn’t right nor fair to yank her chain anymore!
Obama’s energy policy: Turn out the lights and pray for wind
Perhaps the Barack Obama campaign needs the services of a mathematician, but it doesn’t take differential calculus to determine that his energy policy doesn’t add up. Politico reports on Obama’s speech in Lansing, which officially served as the re-launch of his efforts to defuse public anger over Congressional inaction on domestic energy production. Obama wants to both transfer American transportation from oil to electricity and then cut electrical production as well:
The three main components of Obama’s plan are:
— Get 1 million 150 mile-per-gallon plug-in hybrids on U.S. roads within six years.
— Require that 10 percent of U.S. energy comes from renewable sources by the end of his first term – more than double the current level.
—Reduce U.S. demand for electricity 15 percent by 2020.
Well, far be it from me to point out the obvious, but the more cars we have that use “plug-in hybrids”, the more demand for electricity will increase. Apparently, this didn’t catch the attention of the Harvard-educated candidate, but it should catch the attention of the voting public. Transferring the burden of transportation from gasoline to electricity will vastly increase the need for more generating stations.
Even without the transfer of cars from gas to electrical power, how exactly does Obama plan on cutting electrical demand in the US? As the economy and the population grow, the need for electricity will continue to expand as well, in order to just maintain the current standard of living, let alone improve it. Perhaps we will hear more about the electrical equivalent of inflating tires, and Obama does plan to spend billions of dollars weatherizing homes — which Americans do when their energy bills increase anyway.
What happens when the demand doesn’t decrease by 15%? Where will Obama get the energy needed to power the economy? He doesn’t answer that question.
And why worry about electrical demand if Obama believes that we will have emission-free mass-production sources on line in the next 10 years? Electricity in and of itself is completely neutral to the global-warming debate; it’s the source that matters. If we have solar energy perfected, as an example, why worry about electrical demand?
This sounds like a Luddite philosophy, an energy-hostile policy regardless of its source or its benefits. Obama wants America to live in a shortage economy, where we become ever more dependent on government to ration energy and in which our standard of living decreases year after year. Obama talks about Hope, but he’s really selling Despair … and it has started to lose whatever luster it ever had as his energy policies come more into focus.
First of all, I’m sure most of us will still be here in 2013. Secondly, martha hatred for Arabs (Christians and Muslims) as well as Muslims in general, indicates that she is much more likely a Jew than a Protestant. The Christians that are the rabid Zionists aren’t usually the Protestants anyway.
It’ll have to be Northern California, because not only will earthquakes destroy a large part of Southern California, but if this whole global warming “myth” is true, the Southern States will become uninhabitable, and the old coastlines will be gone.
And don’t worry about the PNAC; once the Palestinians regain control of Palestine, they’ll disappear.
zakimar:
Unfortunately, people like martha and percy (who I believe are White Anglo Saxon Protestants) usually get a chance to have a good life, with good food, nice homes and cars. But they waste their lives by not living it freely; they spend their lives doing what others tell them to do. That’s why I don’t like Republickans, because they tend to ‘follow the leader’ and do what he says. What a waste of time, and money to follow a mass murderer and his PNAC agenda!
I’m not too sure about living in California. There was another earthquake there last week, and I just think it’s a matter of time that part of it will break away from the San Andreas Fault and indeed fall into the Pacific Ocean.
I’ve been reading a lot of different things about the year 2012; many ancient civilizations (Mayan, Incan, Aztec, Chinese, Greek) have the end of the world occurring on December 21, 2012, when a series of stars will line up together at the center of the Milky Way and change the North and South poles’ gravity and turn our planet around. If we’re alive, we’ll find out if it’s true, on 12/21/2012.
I’m actually glad that not only are percy and matha allowed, but mespo and others as well. As hard as it is to accept, there are many millions more of them out there. They are the people that reelected Bush and will vote for McCain. If not for them, I’d have to watch Fox, CNN, Bloomberg or Israeli television to get an idea of what the Zionists/racists, bigots, neocons and morons that make up nearly 50% of America think. We’ll see how many of them are out there by the percentage of votes received by McCain.
I’m hoping their ilk make up more than 50% of the population for the next 16 years and they elect more of the Bush/McCain types so that when it’s over, I’ll be able to move to the US and buy one of the millions of vacant houses (preferably in California) for under $250 000.
zakimar:
We really should ask Mr. Turley to ban martha h and percy from his website, because they use up so much precious space, with all their idiotic tripe they ‘cut and paste’; but since Mr. Turley believes in free speech, unlike their ‘master’ Bush, he will allow them to say whatever they wish.
I can just imagine martha and percy, living together under a bridge, telling everyone near the sound of their voices: “God bless George W. Bush!” over and over again, while the rich get richer and more poor join them under the bridge. Eventually those poor will kick out martha and percy out from under the bridge–after all, who wants to live next to mass-murder accomplices and Bush lovers?
And to think that percy says you are a friend of his, just ‘yanking’ my chain…
Mary Leon; You and I are unfortunately in the minority. The fact that Bush II even has a chance against Obama shows that most Americans sleep just fine, even if it’s under a bridge because Bush/McCain/Graham left them unemployed and homeless. If Obama doesn’t win by a landslide, it just proves that the 80% that don’t approve of the direction the country is headed would rather hold on to their racism than their homes or jobs.
And I hope EVERY person in the Military that votes for McCain gets four 18 month tours in Iran. And don’t worry, if they survive, Walter Reed hospital will fix em up reel good.
Percy:
Do you ever watch C-SPAN? There was a good program on yesterday. Vincent Bugliosi (he was the prosecutor for the Charles Manson murders in the early 1970s in California) has written a book, calling for your presidunt Bush to be tried on murder charges after he leaves the White House in January 2009.
Won’t that be wonderful to watch Bush try to justify why he LIED to start the war in Iraq. He will have to face the families of the 4,000+ soldiers he deliberately sent to Iraq and who were killed there.
It doesn’t matter if Bush is tried here on earth or in Heaven; but he will one day have to face the fact that he is a Murderer of our soldiers and of all the hundreds of thousands of Iraqi people that were killed because of his invasion.
I wonder how you people who support him can sleep at night. Don’t all the deaths of this sham of a war bother you? You voted for Bush, so you are guilty of aiding in his murders. I sure wouldn’t want to face the Final Judgment, knowing that I support the Mass Murderer-George W. Bush…
Mary Leon; I am shocked that you would even suggest that Percy would ever entertain telling an untruth. For verily, he and martha h are the Righteous and are Blessed by God.
Percy:
I don’t believe a word you say…
Mary Leon:
Like I said, Zakimar is a friend of our yanking your chain.
martha and percy:
Isn’t it time you two went to church and confessed your sins to the Lord?
Every time you post your tripe here you are adding another strike against you in the Book of Life…
And don’t forget your other “facts” about Islam’s “false Prophet” in 1300 AD and that “Obama doesn’t care about America” and is “a low life”. And remember, it’s Professor zakimar to you.
Also, will the Easter Bunny be travelling with Santa this year because Obama raised the price of gasoline?
It’s official: Obama runs from town-hall debates
posted at 10:00 am on August 3, 2008
Obama’s campaign made its distaste for free-style debates more or less official yesterday in their letter to the Commission on Presidential Debates. Obama only will agree to three debates and all of them in the standard moderated format.
He will not accept McCain’s challenge to meet him in a format where voters can ask the questions:
Obama’s campaign released a letter this afternoon from campaign manager David Plouffe to the Commission on Presidential Debates only agreeing to the traditional three sanctioned fall debates and single vice presidential forum.
The McCain campaign responded with a dose of sarcasm: “We understand it might be beneath a worldwide celebrity of Obama’s magnitude to appear at town hall meetings alongside John McCain and directly answer questions from the American people, but we hope he’ll reconsider.”
This news will surprise no one that has followed the number of gaffes Obama makes when speaking off the cuff. When the press finally got embarrassed by their fawning attitude and asked him tough questions in the Pennsylvania debate, Obama folded like a cheap suit against Hillary — and immediately stopped appearing in debates. He has provided an almost endless series of gaffes when speaking extemporaneously, and obviously wants no part of McCain in this format.
LOL! Time to fess up.
Mary Leon, “Zakimar” is a buddy of ours yanking your chain.
zakimer & mary leon:
I am glad you two nut balls keep putting your words in writing here so the other 2 percenter lunatics can see what ype of idiots they are placating.