Topic: Jonathan Turley

Jonathan Turley is a professor of law at The George Washington University Law School where he holds the Shapiro Chair for Public Interest Law. He frequently appears in the national media as a commentator on a multitude of subjects ranging from the 2000 Presidential Election Controversy to the Terri Schiavo case in 2005. Politico has referred to Turley as a "liberal law professor and longtime civil libertarian."

Some of Turley’s most notable non-academic work is his representation of the Area 51 workers at a secret air base in Nevada; the nuclear couriers at Oak Ridge, Tennessee; the Rocky Flats grand jury in Colorado; Dr. Eric Foretich, the husband in the famous Elizabeth Morgan custody controversy. He challenged Black Bag Operations authorized under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) in espionage cases against former CIA officer Harold Nicholson; and four former United States Attorneys General during the Clinton impeachment litigation. He has also represented defendants in terrorism cases including Dr. Ali Al-Timimi (the alleged head of the Virginia Jihad/Paintball conspiracy) and Dr. Sami Al-Arian (in a criminal contempt case). He also represented Larry Hanauer, a House Intelligence Committee staff member falsely accused of leaking classified information to the New York Times and David Faulk, a whistleblower who revealed abuses at NSA's Fort Gordon surveillance programs. He is also lead counsel in the litigation over the mass arrests at the World Bank/IMF protests in Washington. He testified on the Clinton impeachment as one of the constitutional experts on the standards and merits of the case. The conceptual thread running through many of the cases taken on by Turley is that they involve claims of Executive Privilege and national security exceptions to fundamental constitutional rights.

He is a frequent witness before the House and Senate on constitutional and statutory issues as well as tort reform legislation. He lives in D.C. with his wife Leslie. He served as the consultant to the Florida House of Representatives on constitutional issues and also served as the consultant to the Puerto Rico House of Representatives on the impeachment of Gov. Aníbal Acevedo Vilá. Professor Turley is also a nationally recognized legal commentator. Turley was ranked as 38th in the top 100 most cited “public intellectuals” in the recent study by Judge Richard Posner. Turley was found to be the second most cited law professor in the country. He was also ranked among the nation's top 500 lawyers in 2008. (He was previously ranked in the top ten military lawyers as well as one of the forty top lawyers under the age of forty).