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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Jonathan Turley:
I’ve been aware of your efforts with members of the Rocky Flats Grand Jury to get access to the documents sealed in the Denver Federal Courthouse as part of the out-of-court settlement of the case brought against Rockwell Internatl. after the 1989 FBI raid on the Rocky Flats plant. Some of us are considering approaching the U.S. Attorney for Colo. as a cross section of delegates from varied interests to seek release of the documents to the public, or, as an alternative, access to them by this group, with the understanding that we could reveal what we learn from examining the documents. If possible I’d like to discuss this possibility with you when I’ll be in Washington with the Alliance for Nuclear Accountability April 4-6. If you can’t meet with me and a colleague during this period perhaps you could say whether you think this approach might succeed. Another alternative is to bring a lawsuit to seek release of the documents. I’d be interested in your evaluation of this possibility as well.
I am perhaps the most knowledgeable and persistent critic of the inadequate cleanup at Rocky Flats, including of course the fact that the cleanup was designed and certified by government personnel who made no effort to review the sealed documents to see if they contained information pertinent to the cleanup. If you look at the web site listed above you can see learn about the ambitious I and others are engaged in to implement Nuclear Guardianship at the Rocky Flats site.
Thank you for your attention to these concerns.
Greetings from yesteryear. I write not to contribute to the blog-pong that belongs to the community of diametrically opposed opinionators aggregated on this site. In fact, I write not to offer my opinion on a slither of this site’s content. I write to simply say hi to the professor I had at Tulane Law School in 1990 during my first year property class. It was the year of POPS. It was the year when New Orleans saw a teeny bit of snow that rocked the city senseless. It was the year when Professor Turley anted up and donned a funny Mardi Gras costume.
Congratulations on everything. You were a lot of fun and were/are one of the greats.
I’ve never seen this argument made for the constitutionality of the Health Care Law… realize that there is probably for very good reason why I haven’t. However, I’ve made a fool of myself enough times in public, that doing so in private, even to someone with your pedigree, ain’t that big a deal, so here goes
The Supreme Court has ruled numerous times that Social Security is constitutional.
Medicare is part of Social Security and constitutional.
There is no constitutional prohibition from lowering the effective age of Social Security to 60, or 50, or 20… or birth, including coverage under Medicare.
Therefore, having the government mandate coverage and “contributions” for health care would also be constitutional.
If it just went this far, this line of reasoning would allow for a single payor plan but I think I can take it a step farther…
I have never heard anyone, and certainly no conservative, doubt the constitutionality of Bush’s plan to “privatize” Social Security and allow individuals to make direct contributions to investment institutions on their own.
Certainly, the government could set up reasonable criteria that the investment portfolio would have to meet.
If the government could allow this for traditional Social Security, then it seems the government could specify that, instead of contributing for health care to the government, the individual/company can choose its own health care plan and establish reasonable criteria that the insurance plan must meet.
Dear Professor Turley,
First let me join the many others in expressing my thanks and appreciation for the many times I’ve enjoyed and learned from the clear insight, sound judgment and analysis I have enjoyed so many times when watching your TV appearances.
But I’m writing to point you to this:
http://healthland.time.com/2011/01/05/the-family-judge-who-flipped-out/
I thought you would enjoy it.
Thanks again,
David Merrill
re J Allen Stanford
Case 4:09-cr-00342 Document 116-4 Filed in TXSD on 09/14/09 Page 1 of 3
these are emails about Stanford’s insurance policies, lloyds etc.
Lloyd’s D&O and Company Indemnity Policy
Lloyd’s Financial Institutions Crime and Professional Indemnity Policy
Lloyd’s Excess Blended ‘Wrap” Policy
These policies have numbers but none of them see to be NAIC numbers.
http://search.naic.org/search?
Doesn’t that violate the McCarran Ferguson Act?
Dear Professor
Thanks for letting me blog
This is interesting too and very strange
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/27/nyregion/27forfeiture.html?_r=1
This is an interesting article I think
http://www.9news.com/news/article.aspx?storyid=172345&catid=339#comments
Professor, where do you stand with regard to the lack of judicial immunity for judges who violate the Americans with Disabilitites law (e.g., violation of due process) and also time limits for litigation against disabled litigants, primarily those with hidden disabilities?
Does the new Equal Access to Justice law allow those of us discriminated against due to our disability symptoms have the right to go back and reopen our cases from the date of discrimination because were were too harmed by the act itself to deal with it as it happened?
Do you believe in the validity of Legal Abuse syndrome as a valid disability (www.lvaallc.com)? Do we not have the right to sue albeit we will be in another court before another judge (seems futile, really).
I do not see these issues debated and am hoping you find it of interest.
Mr. Turley,
You are by far my favorite expert talk-show guest (and I’m a news junkie going back decades). You are calm, dignified, focused, and use laser-like precision in espousing your just-the-facts statements. The tone of political discourse could be much improved if we had more like you and less of the paid-spinners and demagogues.
Jeff:
Feel free to leave such messages as many times as you wish. Nice way to start a weekend.
Thanks.
sorry you should have a typo correction — should say
That way they can be sure that all pro se litigants will lose like the other 23000 who unsuccessfully attempt to use the federal courts each year. They should just pass a law saying that only people who hire lawyers can use the federal courts so that everyone will know where they stand.
I wish I hadn’t been such a coward as to think I could solve my problems in court. I would have been better off if I had brought myself to kill my neighbor instead of suing him. I don’t know why I have this hang up about using words instead of guns because words don’t work in court, you have to have money and connections also.
I complained that I was criminally prosecuted without a written statement of probable cause or a signature by a cop. The police report correlating with the criminal charge shows that I complained my neighbor the city council president was violating the constitution by building extra buildings that violated the zoning in order to put in a bring your horse nightly rental in a low density residential neighborhood. I had got the idea from Euclid v. Ambler 272 U.S. 365 (1926) that the 14th Amendment was behind zoning. I complained in the 8th Circuit that Faegre & Benson advised the Steamboat Pilot newspaper to broadcast articles on the Internet that I was to be tried for that even though the charge was dismissed and the d.a. objected to providing a statement of probable cause and that the articles incompletely or inaccurately described the buildings and the local statutes. Faegre’s former partner successfully requested that former judge Nottingham imprison me or my husband if I pursued a defamation or false light claim. As far as I am concerned that was also felony witness intimidation. My suit was based on 42 USC section 1985(2) which applies to federal civil cases. It was dismissed on the basis that I am not allowed to represent myself. I appealed that to the 8th Circuit, paying $455, and I filed a brief. Faegre filed a motion to dismiss on the basis that I am not allowed to represent myself and the 8th Circuit panel granted that in 2 hours and denied my motion for reconsideration. No one even filed a motion to impeach my testimony. There is no intrinsic evidence of fraud on my part. This all started w former judge Nottingham who I am totally convinced was paid off.
You could write on this:
http://www.ca8.uscourts.gov/files/ProSeLitigants.pdf
The result of this 8th Circuit order that PRO SE ECF filings must be as scanned documents only is that the courts can’t use search commands to read pro se ECF filings and they can’t cut and paste from them. Another significant disadvantage to PRO SE litigants. Most PRO SE litigants these days are computer savvy and can save their word documents as a PDF and upload them so that the court can use the electronic search and copy commands exactly as if a lawyer had written them.
I went to the 8th Circuit to look for results of my complaints that several judges ruled I couldn’t represent myself but couldn’t find them. I do have the stamped copies returned in SASE but no other confirmation that I filed them and it has been weeks. The 8th circuit does not allow pro ses to make oral argument either. That way they can be sue that the PRO SES will always lose like the other 23,000 PRO SE litigants who attempt to use the federal courts each year but with the result that 99.9999% get no relief at all.
I filed two complaints w the 7th Circuit and they gave numbers to them and ruled on them but they didn’t post them with the decisions on other complaints. One of the ones that they didn’t post was that I complained I was standing in line in the clerk’s office and two lawyers asked for a private appointment with the magistrate to discuss magistrate business. Justice Easterbrook ruled that the magistrate clerk is supposed to advise lawyers on how to write documents. I immediately filed a motion in the same court to have the magistrate clerk meet with me to advise me on writing but that was denied. The second complaint had to do with Magistrate Crocker holding a hearing supposedly in the name of the U.S. government in which the government didn’t appear or file any documents. At that hearing which the Marshals forced me to attend he didn’t say what my rights were nor what kind of hearing it was supposed to be; he just threatened to have me arrested for filing papers in other federal courts. Criminal witness intimidation ala 18 USC section 1512 as far as I am concerned.
All these no PRO SE court acts benefit the insurance companies that are behind the scenes. Probably the insurance companies are paying off the judges directly or maybe funding the bench and bar golf outings.
Imagine the military sitting in Maryland with xray technicians, computer analysts, network junkies in a 3D environment after putting in for the positions for the FBI and military via Dice, etc., to sit and observe your thoughts and actions via the “neural network” as they claim “national security” for some false reason.
Targeting victims of corrupt government as they do to keep from being exposed for lawsuits and iniquity or outrageous government conduct from violating individuals Constitutional Rights all of their lives as they’ve done to me before leaking their technology and threatening me to work for them with all of this.
It’s all yours for the taking. http://neuralnetwork.comuv.com
US Patents don’t lie. They use it with the eye in the sky from Homeland Security too.
Professor Turley: Saw you today, loved your insight, as always.
I used to visit this site a lot, but have become increasingly busy.
I was wondering why you decided to drop Tumblr, say you were going to use Fried Eggs, and ended up on Twitter, when Fried Eggs would put you on Facebook and Twitter.
I’ve been going to Bloggers Unite, was invited to Blog Catalog, and Fried Eggs, as well as a few other projects, are an extension of this effort. I was just wondering why. Too much exposure? You never seemed to be the shy type.
Jonathan Turley on The End of Privacy. TTC Transfer Please. | INDEX // mb
Trackback on 1, October 13, 2008 at 4:05 am
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Is judicial relief from First Amendment Retaliation non discretionary?
oh and thecoward Stephen Levitt and Oliver North plus their spy network poisoners within the United States.
(amend to 10/16.)
oh and Stephen Levitt and Oliver North plus their spy network poisoners within the United States.
(amend to 10/16.)
You could write an interesting article about Valerie Plame’s unsuccessful Privacy Act Lawsuit now that “Fair Game” the movie about her experiences is coming out. One thing I don’t understand is what she and her lawyers expected when they sued under 5 USC 552a even though CIA records are so easy to exclude from the liability provisions of the Act by publication in the Federal Register. If I worked for the CIA and then sued under The Privacy Act, I would have been “roasted” with all sorts of comments about frivolous lawsuits and defending the courts from the potential hoards of pro se litigants.
oh and every poisoner.
Justice Holder – Start with Ed Ruzikowski(sic) and his network of spies in Gainesville, Fla. Every file of every person they have spied on Their sustainers in Washington.