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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 23 August 2006
The Powers of War and Peace: The Constitution and Foreign Affairs After 9/11. By John Yoo. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005. 378p. $29.00 cloth, $19.00 paper.
Most readers of this journal will recognize the name of John Yoo, legal architect of the Bush administration's most controversial policies in the war on terror. In the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, Yoo played a decisive role in the Office of Legal Counsel to the U.S. Department of Justice, where he regularly defended the most extreme legal options under consideration by the administration. In August 2002, he penned a memo arguing that both international and domestic legal prohibitions on torture represent illegitimate restraints on presidential power. His legal views rapidly gained the upper hand because they told the president what he wanted to hear: As commander in chief, the president can do pretty much whatever he wants in order to protect the American people.