California Patriot Profile: John Yoo, Defender of the Founders’ Constitution
A veteran Berkeley law professor, John Yoo has become one of America’s most influential conservative interpreters of the Constitution.
Every week we highlight a different California Patriot — someone who has stood tall for the ideas of liberty and freedom in a state where the governing class is filled with left-wing ideologues that embrace both collectivism and authoritarianism. Today we profile one of the most influential constitutional scholars of his generation — and one of the sharpest defenders of limited government, the rule of law, and the separation of powers…
The Constitutional Conservative the Left Loves to Hate
John Yoo is not just a familiar name to constitutional scholars — he is one of the most consequential conservative legal thinkers California has produced in the past half-century. A longtime professor at UC Berkeley School of Law, Yoo is a Distinguished Visiting Scholar at the School of Civic Leadership and is a Senior Research Fellow at the Civitas Institute, at the University of Texas at Austin (yeah, that’s a mouthful). He also serves as a non-resident senior fellow for the American Enterprise Institute. Across these platforms, he has shaped national debates on executive authority, national security, the courts, and the proper limits of government power. His work has influenced policy at the highest levels of government and continues to serve as an intellectual anchor for conservatives fighting to preserve America’s constitutional order.
I first met John when he was on the faculty when I went through the Claremont Institute’s Lincoln Fellowship Program long ago, and he still teaches for Claremont even today.
What sets Yoo apart is not simply the depth of his scholarship, which spans everything from war powers to regulatory overreach, but his willingness to challenge the academic monoculture around him. Berkeley’s law faculty is dominated by progressive ideologues who treat government expansion as the default setting. Yoo is the counterweight — calm, precise, and unapologetic about the Founders’ vision of checks and balances. His arguments irritate the left not because they’re fringe, but because they are rooted in the Constitution as written, not as re-imagined by activists or bureaucrats.
“John is one of the smartest and most prolific constitutional lawyers in the country. He has many of the right enemies and he’s a loyal friend. We cherish those qualities at the Claremont Institute.” - Ryan Williams, President, The Claremont Institute
While many conservative academics stay quiet in hostile institutions, Yoo never has. He writes. He debates. He appears in public. And he continues to teach new generations of students what limited government actually means.
Defending the Constitution in an Era of Government Expansion
Yoo has spent his career sounding the alarm on a trend few elected officials want to confront: the steady growth of unchecked executive agencies, administrative sprawl, and rule-by-regulation. Using historical analysis and constitutional text, Yoo has argued that modern government increasingly bypasses the people’s elected representatives — replacing democratic accountability with unelected regulators, commissions, and permanent bureaucracy.
His central message: America’s Constitution gives strong powers to each branch, but only when they operate within defined limits. When presidents, courts, or agencies exceed those limits, liberty shrinks.
Yoo does not rail emotionally against bad policy — he dismantles it with logic, historical evidence, and the Founders’ original design. That is why even his critics often concede his seriousness as a legal thinker.
A Voice for Constitutionalism, Not Bureaucracy
Yoo’s writing regularly exposes the contradiction in modern governance: the louder politicians speak about “democracy,” the more power they shift to unelected bureaucrats. He warns that this shift is deliberate — a way for lawmakers to avoid responsibility while allowing agencies to govern by fiat.
He champions:
a strong but constitutionally bound executive
an independent judiciary that interprets, not invents, law
a Congress that actually legislates instead of outsourcing
and a federal government restrained enough to leave room for states, communities, and families
Yoo doesn’t keep his scholarship confined to the classroom. You is a frequent speaker as places where smart conservatives gather, makes plenty of appeared on cable news, writes columns in major publications, and particulates in regular podcasts.
He is one of the anchors of the Hoover Institution’s “Law Talk” podcast, alongside Richard Epstein and Troy Senik, where the trio breaks down the latest legal battles with clarity, humor, and unapologetic constitutional grounding.
Yoo also joins my friend Steven Hayward regularly on the “Power Line Show” and related programs such as the “Three Whisky Happy Hour,” where the conversation widens to politics, culture, national issues, and the absurdities of modern governance. The Making of a Constitutional Defender
Yoo earned his undergraduate degree from Harvard University and his Juris Doctor from Yale Law School (reminding us of the adage that even a broken clock shows the right time twice a day). After clerking for Judge Laurence Silberman on the D.C. Circuit and Justice Clarence Thomas on the U.S. Supreme Court, he joined the U.S. Department of Justice’s Office of Legal Counsel during the George W. Bush administration. There, he dealt directly with questions of war powers, civil liberties, and executive authority — areas where future legal battles were destined to be fought.
Whatever critics say about his conclusions, none dispute that Yoo has been central to shaping 21st-century legal debates. He teaches, he writes, and he fights for a constitutional order rooted in the Founders’ vision rather than the impulses of modern administrative government.
So, Does It Matter?
This entire Substack is devoted to writing about things that matter, and people that matter. In California — and America — we desperately need legal thinkers willing to push back against the idea that government power should grow without limit. In a state where regulatory agencies act as lawmakers, tax collectors, and enforcers all at once, Yoo’s work is a reminder that the Constitution wasn’t written to be ignored.
I have seen Yoo’s work up close for years. He is as steady and serious privately as he is publicly, and his intellectual courage is matched only by his commitment to teaching the next generation what constitutional liberty actually means.
His scholarship matters because it offers a different future — one defined by limits on government, respect for the rule of law, and an understanding that freedom survives only when power is restrained. A patriot, indeed.
Two Great Videos
Here is Yoo being interviewed by Larry Kudlow on Fox Business on the issue of tariff’s being before the Supreme Court this term.
This is a great interview on the issues with Yoo, by PBS’s Frontline.
Check Out Our Library of 21 Other California Patriot Profiles!
Each week, we profile an exemplary California conservative. Previous profiles have been of Orange County Sheriff Don Barnes, Political Law Attorney Chuck Bell, Federal Judge Roger Benitez, the late Andrew Breitbart, actor and comedian Adam Carolla, HJTA President Jon Coupal, Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon, San Luis Obispo County District Attorney Dan Dow, actor Kelsey Grammer, investigative journalist Katy Grimes, pro-liberty attorney Julie Hamill, historian Victor Davis Hanson, Dr. Charles Kesler, Editor of the Claremont Review of Books, Congressman Kevin Kiley, talk radio host John Kobylt, Pastor Rob McCoy of Turning Point Faith, Former CAGOP Chairman Ron Nehring, the late Second Amendment champion Sam Paredes, talk radio host Dennis Prager, actor Gary Sinise, economist and author Thomas Sowell, and actor James Woods. You can go here to see them all! If you have an idea for a patriot to profile, let me know!