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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Hello, I had a similar incident happen to me at Stanford Children’s hospital.
However, when she had open heart surgery, She passed away from a clot in her drainage tube.
Karl Eastman
(502)403-6035
May 19, 2012
David Elliot Chipps
Wilkes-Barre, Pa.
Senator Patrick Leahy
United States Senate
Chairman, Senate Judiciary Committee
224 Dirksen Senate Office Building
Washington, DC 20510
Leahy,
Recently it has come to my attention that Federal District Court District Judge Malachy Mannion has been nominated by President Barack Obama for the position of Federal District Court Judge for the Middle District of Pennsylvania.
This letter concerns that nomination and I would ask you to consider this information as affadavitized testimony in that regard.
I include herein two copyrighted publications concerning Mannion that have been in circulation among 3,400 media and third parties for almost two years. Both publications state clearly, emphatically, that Federal District Court District Judge Mannion is and has been involved in the use of stark and blatant criminal official oppression and provides some evidentiary basis for this fact. These exact same factual statements are also found in federal District Court Briefs that are on file in the Middle District Court of Pennsylvania and the Third Circuit Court of Appeals in Philadelphia [ Supplemental Brief of the Appellant, Third Circuit, No. 98-7456, filed in April, 2000 ].
To be quite explicit about it since 1987 – almost the entire length of Mannions career – I have been publishing that Mannion has been involved in criminal actions that amount to ‘criminal’ official oppression; ‘criminal conspiracy’; ‘criminal obstruction of justice’; and, the ‘criminal’ violation of federal court precedent established to protect the legal and civil rights of individuals. In fact Mannion’s entire federal career would be more perfectly described as the “epitomy of ultra vire”.
If the United States Senate Judiciary Committee affirms Mannion’s nomination for the position of Federal District Court Judge you will be, in essence, affirming Mannion’s practice of criminal activity and continuing in the ultra vire court that operates in the Middle and Western Districts of Pennsylvania, and, in the panels of the Third Circuit Court of Appeals.
The sole reason that Mannion exists in ultra vire in this federal court system is due to the fact that this government – to include the Attorney General and this very Senate Judiciary Committee – has, in the past, deliberately failed to indict Mannion, and, has been covering-up his criminal activity for political reasons.
Let me be more specific.
Almost one year after I first began publishing information about the criminal actions of Mannion and in the federal Middle District Court, in 1987, the Times Leader newspaper published this account of my efforts:
[ Dec. 11, 1988 ] ‘What other options are left for David Chipps?
Well, for one, in addition to his still-pending appeals to the Supreme Court, a review
by the Senate Judiciary Committee is a possibility.
“It’s gotten to the point now where I’m accusing federal judges of clearly acting
unconstitutionally,” Chipps says. “If I were a member of the Senate Committee
and heard that, I’d want to launch an inquiry.” ‘
And, in fact, I had indeed formally requested that the Senate Judiciary Committee conduct an inquiry into this very matter. Not long after, in January, 1989, United States Senator Joseph Biden – then Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee – informed me that the Judiciary Committee would not conduct any inquiry into this matter. That failure to act – and, in my opinion, Biden was covering-up criminal activity in this matter – allowed Mannion and this ultra vire court to continue this criminal activity and official oppression to the present day…almost 23 years now. As well my approaching the US Senate Judiciary Committee was prefectly appropriate in that the Judiciary Committee was and is the only legal entity with the legal authority to remove federal jurists acting in ultra vire.
In 1986 Mannion and Federal District Court Judge William Nealon were acting concurrently in exercising criminal obstruction. Mannion would repeat this criminal obstruction ten years later, in 1998, with Federal District Court Judge Robert Cindrich even more blatantly. All toll I count 14 federal jurists in the Middle And Western Districts of Pennsylvania and the Third Circuit Court of Appeals who are hiding behind judicial immunity while either committing criminal acts or sustaining them in ultra vire (to include Federal District Court Judges William Nealon, Robert Cindrich and Yvette Kane and Third Circuit Court Judges Dolores K. Sloviter, Collins J. Seitz and Carol Los Mansmann), and, a cloak of immunity that I am certain Mannion is looking forward to hiding behind to absolve him of criminal actions in the future.
Let there be no doubt that I have no illusions about what the filth in this government is capable of, however, this is how I will view the affirmation of Mannion to the federal bench.
Mannions affirmation to me would mean the opportuniy to publish even more information about his criminal activity and those government officials who are aware of this activity and directly responsible for it (to include the present members of the Judiciary Committee). Mannions affirmation would mean the immediate release of some very sensitive information. It seems that at some point in time a juror, or jurors, are going to have the opportunity to refuse to serve on a jury in a courtroom in which Mannion presides because of his criminal activity. I will, among other things, also provide both plaintiffs and defendants with substantive information about Manions criminal conduct, and, provide substantive material testimony of this same conduct in legal actions over which Mannion presides and in which the government is defendant.
My whole point is that Mannions affirmation will provide me with perfect opportunities to continue to initiate sustained, substantial direct action on an even higher level. I assure that I will avail myself of those opportunities.
Finally, in 1987, after having made a public appeal to the Senate Judiciary Committee to take action, I continued to provide information to the Judiciary Committee and its members of the criminal activity ongoing in the Federal District Court for the Middle District of Pennsylvania. Biden was not the only Judiciary Committee member whom I continued to provide a wealth of published information to about this matter. US Senator Orrin Hatch, currently still serving on the Judiciary Committee, was also on my mailing list. For almost ten years after my initial appeal both Biden and Hatch routinely received the published documents in this matter. And, despite the fact that neither Biden or Hatch had anything further to say in those ten years about the criminal activity I was describing it was in fact Hatch who, in 1997, contacted the FBI about the “Nealon letter” that led to my arrest. “Allegedly” Hatch was concerned that the rhetoric in the Nealon letter contained a “threat”, although, in my opinion, Hatch was merely a front man in a black bag scheme by this government to retaliate and attack my credibility because of what I had been publishing.
I today regard both Biden and Hatch to be perfect examples of the duplicitous filth in this government who are either covering-up this criminal official oppression, or, who are involved in it while publicly mimicking their committment to law and order.
_______________________________________
David E. Chipps
CC: “The Perfect Choice”
the “Mannion” pr
the Times Leader article
Judiciary Committee members
Washington Post
Washington Times
The Boston Globe
The New York Times
media
Hello Jonathan, I have just recently started following some of your cases and your writing when I realized we must be cousins. I am sure we are connected through my grandfather Theodore Turley. Would love to know your take on that. We may have some connection through our relationship through Clarence Darrow who is a cousin of ours. keep up the good work!
Ray C. Parrish
Remember the Paddington?
Dr Turley:
If Eric Holder can announce he is resigning effective the day his replacement is sworn in, that means the senate will be holding hearings etc and voting on his successor WHILE HE IS STILL HOLDING THE OFFICE HE WILL RESIGN FROM. Ie., he didn’t RESIGN, he simply said he WOULD when conditions were right.
Libs want Ruth Ginsburg to pack it in now so BO can have a Dem senate vote on her successor now because there’s a good chance the senate will be Republican in January.
So…what’s stopping Ruth from announcing tomorrow that she is resigning at the end of term in June 2015 and Obama nominating her successor (Eric Holder) tomorrow and the Dem senate approving in Dec 2014. Time? Holder’s successor COULD take that long to get confirmed and no one seems to be objecting.
Prof Turley,
The question in you blog is very intriguing and as a citizen who follows your blog periodically I am quite interested in what the legal actions would be to a situation that is described below: It seems to me that the Minority leader would pick up the lead until another was voted on to replace the Majority Leader, or would there be a different scenario here? Please e-mail me an answer. I am not the brightest student of political law but I definitely am one of the most inquisitive. Thank you for your time. Nelson Dr. Turley, I have a constitutional question: Let’s say the Senate is tied 50-50. Because of Biden, Harry Reid continues as Majority Leader, and committee chairs are all Dems. But what if Biden died? Suddenly, there’s no Majority Leader. Who runs the show? Who chairs committees? Especially since the Senate will have to confirm the new VP, how would it function? Intriguing question that’s never come up in US history before….
Dr. Turley, I have a constitutional question: Let’s say the Senate is tied 50-50. Because of Biden, Harry Reid continues as Majority Leader, and committee chairs are all Dems.
But what if Biden died? Suddenly, there’s no Majority Leader. Who runs the show? Who chairs committees? Especially since the Senate will have to confirm the new VP, how would it function?
Intriguing question that’s never come up in US history before….
You can definitely see your enthusiasm in the article you write.
The world hopes for even more passionate writers such as you who are not afraid to mention how they believe.
All the time follow your heart.
Uber vs. Ubermensch
My New Oxford American Dictionary has the following definitions for the above:
Uber:
Denoting an outstanding or supreme example of a particular kind of person
Ubermensch:
The ideal superior man of the future who could rise above conventional Christian morality to create and impose his own values, originally described by Nietzsche in Thus Spake Zarathustra (1883-85)
It seems to me that Ubermensch is far better word to apply to the case of President Obama rather than the somewhat neutral Uber.
Regards,
Charles Kindel
cekindel@aol.com
Hold fast Prof. Turley, let nothing move you.
Thanks for sharing your thoughts about chilling.
Regards
Mr. Turley,
I am a Florida high schooler who is apart of a program called S.W.A.T.( students working against tobacco) I read your ‘ A Nasty Drag in Niceville’ post. At the end of your post your said “E-cigarettes heat liquid nicotine rather than using tobacco and are billed as healthier alternatives for smokers.” I would just like to inform you that they are not. E-cigs are far more dangerous as your post showed. E-cigs can explode in your mouth, they are easier to get no-smokers addicted, and it is proven that using e-cigs produces a worse second hand smoke for the people around you.
– sincerely
Logan
Mr Turley,
For you to go on a show like Hannity who you well now is a partisan hack you lose all your credibility. It a shame because I really respected you…. But I don’t anymore….