John Yoo on the constitutional questions raised by the coronavirus

Can President Trump unilaterally “reopen” the country? How much power do the states’ governors have to regulate businesses, parks, and other facilities? Can we make China pay for the economic damage the CCP has wrought? And when and how will these interminable lockdowns end? Law professor, constitutional expert, and podcast aficionado John Yoo joined Banter this week to answer these questions and more.

John Yoo is Emanuel S. Heller Professor of Law at the University of California, Berkeley, and a visiting scholar at AEI since 2003. He served as a deputy assistant attorney general in the Office of the Legal Counsel of the US Department of Justice from 2001 to 2003, where he worked on constitutional and national security matters, as General Counsel of the US Senate Committee on the Judiciary from 1995–96, and as a law clerk to Justice Clarence Thomas of the US Supreme Court. He is the author “Crisis and Command: A History of Executive Power from George Washington to George W. Bush,” and the upcoming “Defender in Chief: Donald Trump’s Fight for Presidential Power,” among other books.

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