East Bay La Raza Lawyers Association

The East Bay La Raza Lawyers Association joins local and national legal organizations calling upon California Department of Justice attorney David Carrillo to reconsider teaching a constitutional law course with Boalt Hall law professor John Yoo.

Authored by the National Lawyers Guild - San Francisco Bay Area Chapter, the open letter calls for Mr. Carrillo to meet and discuss grave concerns about how co-teaching the course will serve to legitimize Professor Yoo, whose actions as a Bush Administration attorney created the legal justification for US torture policies — in contravention of binding domestic and international human rights law and the professional responsibility of a governmental lawyer advising one’s client.

The EBLRLA joins the following organizations in co-signing the letter:

• Alliance for Justice
• Berkeley La Raza Law Students Association
• Boalt Alliance to Abolish Torture
• Law Students for Justice in Palestine
• National Lawyers Guild UC Berkeley School of Law Chapter

“By co-signing this letter, we express our views on the ethical duties of organized lawyers to educate the public on the limits of the rule of law — which Professor Yoo clearly violated and which Mr. Carrillo threatens to legitimize,” says EBLRLA president Marc-Tizoc González, an attorney at the Homeless Action Center and lecturer in the UC Berkeley Chicano/Latino Studies Program.

“In particular, we express solidarity with other legal organizations promoting accountability for the abuses of the Bush Administration, which distorted legal reasoning to justify torture and other policies abhorrent to the US constitution and international human rights norms,” he continued.

“As legally educated people whose ancestry and heritage extends throughout Latin America, it is incumbent on us to help educate the public in the terrible histories of torture and to ensure that we not forget the recent past. We look forward to meeting and discussing these matters with Mr. Carrillo.”