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, the University of Chicago, and other schools. He is a New York Times best-selling author of The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in an Age of Rage (available here) and “Rage and the Republic: The Unfinished Story of the American Revolution” (#2 on NY Times Bestseller List).
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 2024, a G.W. alum endowed a fellowship after him, “The Professor Jonathan Turley Public Interest and Public Service Summer Fellowship.”
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. (He was ultimately cleared of all charges in 2026). In 2020, the federal court found that there was 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 served as an expert defense witness in the extradition proceedings of Wikileaks founder Julian Assange in London. Turley was asked to testify on the likely pre-trial, trial, and appellate issues facing Mr. Assange as well as the prison conditions that he could expect upon extradition to Northern Virginia for trial.
Professor Turley also agreed to serve as lead counsel representing the Brown family from the TLC program “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 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 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 with 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. He has testified over 100 times in the House and the Senate. 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 ranked in the top five most popular law professors on Twitter and 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 his 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.
In 2024, the Washingtonian recognized Turley as one of the most influential persons in shaping policy. 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 was 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. In addition to teaching a course on the Supreme Court and the Constitution, he is on the board of the Supreme Court Historical Society.
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.
Twitter: @jonathanturley
Jonathan Turley is the Shapiro professor of public interest law at George Washington University and the author of “The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in an Age of Rage.” and “Rage and the Republic: The Unfinished Story of the American Revolution.”
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Love your “take” on much of what is going on Professor Turley. Am also a Constitutional scholar, and ex-paralegal for one of the foremost corporate lawyers in the country, John Tate, who was fundamentally responsible for the rise and success of Wal-Mart (until the British bankers took over and the Boards of Directors for that company and out of the family owned hands at its roots).
I also use the “intent” of the founders for my renderings of the Constitution in the provisions, and also the manner in which it was to be ratified (per the power of the 9th which precedes even the 10th with respect to any further “lawful” amendments to it).
I write for a blog also, http://www.backupamerica.org. Hope you will read some of what I have written also on the violations which continue to place this country and its law now under British interpretation, rather than our Constitution – and do blame the law schools also for their negligence in challenging some of the decision which have been reached by rogue courts and judges that have resulted in the fact that the courts are now just as political as the other two branches and clearly operating outside their lawful jurisdiction and duties and powers of office, many times using their own court rules to violate it.
Great reading. And keep up the good work since those judges also need to be held to the fire for their continued treason.
There are only a few people I respect and even fewer I admire.
You’re one.
Liberty & Justice,
sj
FYI:
Orly Taitz’s Motion To Recuse Judge Clay Land (10/2/09)
http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/documents/2009/10/orly-taitzs-motion-to-recuse-judge-clay-land-10209.php?page=1
Summary article:
http://rawstory.com/2009/10/birther-leader-judge-collusion/
For your consideration:
“The Threat to Your Liberties Is Here”
http://original.antiwar.com/roberts/2009/10/04/the-threat-to-your-liberties-is-here/
Dear Jonathan Turley:
When the opening came up in the Supreme Court, I wondered why they did not immediately vote you in! What better person to uphold the Constitution on that Court???
Thanks to Keith Olbermann for bringing us all these interesting people on his show, so we can get to know the really great people on this planet!
Hooray for you!!
Prof. Turley,
May I suggest you include numbering of the comments following each article.
Thanks,
J Puma
Dear Professor Turley:
RE: YOUR BLOG “MOTIVATIONAL SPEAKER CHARGED WITH SEX ASSAULT” (MAY 2008)
I am a lawyer and I am writing to inform you that the charges laid against Mr. Bijan Anjomi by the City of Toronto police were withdrawn by the Crown Attorney’s Office in September 2008. Your blog refers to the laying of the charges but fails to recognize or report the withdrawal of them some 12 months ago. Here is the telephone number of the Crown Attorney’s Office in the Ministry of the Attorney General of Ontario for your ease of reference: 416.327.5990 or 416.327.5917
Please remove your report of and all records from your index and archive pertaining to charges laid against Mr. Anjomi as this is misleading at best and somewhat libelous.
Please govern yourself accordingly.
Yours sincerely,
Jeunesse L. Hosein, B.A., LL.B.
Barrister & Solicitor
PRof Turley:
Consider an article about the House bill (Senate amendment) against ACORN funding as bills of attainder.
Thanks
Dear Mr. Turley,
I searched your site, but didn’t find a reference to this astonishing news. Can you weigh in on the matter?
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/08/opinion/08tue1.html?_r=2&hp
“The Supreme Court may be about to radically change politics by striking down the longstanding rule that says corporations cannot spend directly on federal elections. If the floodgates open, money from big business could overwhelm the electoral process, as well as the making of laws on issues like tax policy and bank regulation…”
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/08/opinion/08tue1.html?_r=2&hp
Thank you,
Wendy Johnson
Keith Olberman has canckles.
Prof. Turley,
Would you please review the upcoming case Citizen’s United vs FEC? It seems that the Court has decided to extend it’s reach.
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/251/story/74965.html
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20090906_it_could_be_the_end_of_our_democracy_as_we_know_it/
Professor:
Why are you not on the short list of prospective Supreme Court nominees? I have watched you on Rachel’s and Keith’s shows, listened to your cogent explanations of things legal and arcane — to me, a mere journalism major — and believe you would bring much-needed sanity and (dare I say it) empathy to the Supreme Court.
Is there any way I, a common citizen of these United States, may place your name in the nomination pool?
…Cindy Perry of Alpine, Texas
(See, not EVERY Texan is a tea-party-lovin’ Rushite! I adored Ann Richards and weep every time I think about her loss to The Shrub. Boy, I miss Ann!)
Crackas Gone Crazy…
All of a sudden it’s a problem if a president wants to talk to school kids. People if you don’t see the hatred and hidden agendas of these people, make a fist and punch yourself in the face. It wasn’t enough just to vote for the President, we have to be a voice in the process. Active participants. Where are we now after the election. Virtually invisible while “Crackers gone wild” plays out everywhere throughout the political landscape. Healthcare reform is for us, about us. It is the one singular thing the president can do for us without being overtly racial. How many of us avoid doctors visits because of lack of insurance? Are we even paying attention anymore. “Crackas gone wild” showing up at town hall meetings with loaded guns, shouting down a woman confined to wheel chair and the vilest of hall, continuing to refer to the president as Hitler. Some crazy cracka just smacked a woman’s two year old at the mall because the baby was crying repeatedly. bLouis Farrakhan finally admitted that while he was not directly involved in the assination of Malcom X, he contributed to the climate that lead to Malcom’s death. The very same thing is happening right now before our eyes and we are silent. Where are all the gun toting thugs, the load mouth baby mammas, the black cops that’ll shoot an unarmed black man in the back before they’ll speak out in support of the president. Well I can’t sit by the sidelines any longer. Crackas can go wild if they want to but if something bad happens it’s gonna be a whole lot of slow singing and flower bringing.
Hi, I’m so glad to have found this way to contact you! I’m a retired FBI agent who, before retiring, spoke out a few times after 9-11 when things were covered-up and then went insane. I think you might have even written something about that back then. Since retiring, I’ve become a peace and social justice-civil liberties activist in the Twin Cities and have gotten involved in trying to expose the involvement of a St. Thomas Law School professor Robert Delahunty, i.e. “Calling Out the Torture Enablers at St. Thomas Law School” at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/coleen-rowley/calling-out-the-torture-e_b_269240.html and http://www.mncampaignreport.com/diary/3827/homework-assignment-for-st-thomas-law-school-on-torture . I have discovered that “Distinguished Chair” Michael Stokes Paulsen recruited Delahunty to come to Minnesota and used his weight to get Delahunty the teaching job. Without disclosing anything about his connection to Delahunty, at least as far as I can see, St. Thomas Law Professor Paulsen testified on May 13, 2009, about “The Lawfulness of the Interrogation Memos” to the Subcommittee on Administrative Oversight and the Courts of the U.S. Senate Committee on the Judiciary.
I was hoping you could take a look at Professor Paulsen’s defense of the torture enablers: http://www.stthomas.edu/law/academics/curriculum/PaulsenSenateTestimony.pdf and see if you’d be interested in coming here to debate him or possibly them (Delahunty, although Delahunty has refused prior offers to debate).
Amtrak owns the First Amendment?
http://lawprofessors.typepad.com/firstamendment/
Judge Orders Westlaw/Lexis To Remove Opinions In Klein v. Amtrak.
Amtrak agreed to a confidential settlement with two PA teens who suffered massive burns in 2002 after they climbed aboard a parked railcar and stepped too close to a live wire. Part of the settlement calls for the trial judge to vacate prior rulings in the case, and have them erased from Lexis and Westlaw.
The August 10 order to vacate, issued by US District Judge Lawrence Stengel, stated that “by separate written communication . . . the Court shall direct LexisNexis and Westlaw to remove the Decisions and Orders listed below from their respective legal research services/databases.”
How could such an order be enforced against an entity that wasn’t party to the suit, not to mention the First Amendment defenses that would save them in a contempt proceeding?
A Westlaw rep told The Legal Intelligencer [http://www.law.com/jsp/article.jsp?id=1202433145853&thepage=1] that the company automatically clears vacated opinions from the database – but that can’t be right since I’ve got a pile of vacated Westlaw cases sitting on my desk. Nevertheless, the Klein docs have been removed, so it appears they took the easy road in deciding to comply with the judge’s . . . order, request, direction . . . or whatever you call it.
As of yesterday, the opinions were still available on the Internet. Volokh links to some of them at this post, saying they should be preserved for future litigators and scholars. I’m not so altruistic. I just think the order, if anything more than a non-binding suggestion, is an absurd breach of the First Amendment. So I’ll link to them below, via the hard-drive PDFs I created yesterday, at the off chance they start disappearing from the web.
Dear Professor Turley;
This morning I heard part of an interview you gave on one of the cable networks about the rights of protesters to carry firearms near the President. I believe I heard you say that there really was nothing that could be done to prevent these people from expressing their Constitutional rights under the Second Amendment by carrying a gun.
I would counter your position by pointing out that both major political parties have no problem truncating the First Amendment “freedom of speech” rights of protesters by forcing dissenting opinions to be expressed at distances of up to a mile away in so-called “free speech zones”, as to avoid possibly offending the sensibilities of said public officials and office holders. As obviously unconstitutional as this censoring of dissent is, there is no similar hue and cry in the corporate media to end this practice. I would hope that at some point you might point up this bit of hypocrisy in one of your regular appearances as a legal expert.
Thanks for your attention.
Thanks for all the great work on Countdown.
There is a reason George W. Bush trampled the Constitution. No, he is not a lawyer. But he wanted to be one. Bush applied to the law school at The University of Texas at Austin. He was rejected by Dean Keeton.
Dear Jonathan,
I enjoy your TV interviews; you slap them crooks around so elegantly. Why do I see you as “John the Giant Killer?” Because I see you maybe as the man who could really make a difference.
I want to bring the Congress to task over the mandatory use of Chemotherapy. In fact a fun thing might be an assault on the entire medical system, it could be an enlightening project for your law students.
I can prove to anyone who will listen, how to cure and prevent cancer for most all kinds, for most all people. I have deemed myself “the worlds leading cancer survival expert” because I have survived three different kinds of documented terminal cancer since 1995 and I know absolutely why and how! And I say; it is the treatment that is killing us and not the cancer!!”
But I can’t legally say “-hit!” When I look up I don’t see folks eager to learn the secret, I see a gigantic steam roller, puffing steam, and shaking the ground around me. I want to scream the truth, but the corrupted deceit has drowned the message of “anyone” opposing the gargantuan medical monopoly.
Let us say it out plain and clear;”because of the policies and the laws imposed by our congress, Human Beings or suffering immensely and dying because of the use of Chemo!” “Information is being withheld with criminal intent to perpetuate and protect a high dollar and well guarded secret, at the expense of the lives of “many Human Beings!”
Will you be my attorney? I will simply speak the truth. At least let me speak to you? Write back? I will explain in a very few words why and how we must revive our immune system “the root core of our life!” Chemtherapy is the practice of injecting poison into our bloodstream; and the immune system is the first thing to die.
Our immune system is the only thing that can do any healing; it has constructed this wonderful masterpiece, cell by cell since conception, 99.9% to a perfect blueprint with over Three Billion parts that all work together real-time with a God given positive inbred drive to survive.
Why do we think that poison can improve this show?
VOR,
When those whom you consider to be the enemy are the elected majority, you are merely a subversive, anti-American.
Mr. Turley:
Regarding your item on Bush, Cheney et al in 2002. That which you fear did not take place.
Have you written or sounded off on any of the insanity that is going on in Washington that began shortly after 12 noon on January 20th, 2009?
Are you so idealogically twisted that you do not see the threat to all of our freedoms that are brewing in our nation’s seat of power right now?
I used to think you were an intelligent man; now I fear you are one of the enemy.