Arguing Away the Law: Prudential Erasure of the Forensic in John C. Yoo’s War by Other Means: An Insider's Account of the War on Terror

• In Event: Scholar to Scholar II

Abstract

Rhetorical critics have noted the exceptional degree to which George W. Bush depended on the epideictic genre to justify policy decisions. As the legal adviser to the President most responsible for justifying the Administration’s policies within a legal framework, the vernacular legal discourse of John Yoo, hailed as the “architect of the post-9/11 Constitution” is examined in this paper as prudential legal argument that both hybridizes genre and sublimates conventional legal concerns for executive authority.

Author

• Mary Lynn Veden, University of Washington