Reply #29: Yoo is an idiot.

[Vattel]

He is not, as some claim, a gifted but misguided scholar. He is incredibly dense. His argumentation in his book on war powers provides countless examples of fallacious reasoning. He is a dumb-ass. He publishes in top law reviews because the law review process is utterly corrupt. The student editors who decide what gets published typically have little expertise in most areas of the law, the review is not blind, and articles are chosen not on the basis of their quality but on the basis of the author's institution (Yoo is at UCBerkley), the author's credentials (Yoo clerked for Thomas), and other bad criteria. No one trained in argumentation would take Yoo's book seriously. He couldn't argue his way out of a paper bag.