Jonathan Turley

Jonathan Turley is an American conservative attorney, legal scholar, writer, commentator, and legal analyst in broadcast and print journalism.

A professor at George Washington University Law School, he has testified in United States congressional proceedings about constitutional and statutory issues.

He has also testified in multiple impeachment hearings and removal trials in Congress, including the impeachment of President Bill Clinton and both the first and second impeachments of President Donald Trump.

Turley is a First Amendment advocate and writes frequently on free speech restrictions in the private and public sectors.

He is the author of The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in the Age of Rage (Simon & Schuster 2024).

Turley served as a House leadership page in 1977 and 1978 under the sponsorship of Illinois Democrat Sidney Yates.

He received a bachelor's degree from the University of Chicago in 1983, and a Juris Doctor degree from Northwestern University School of Law in 1987.

He served as Executive Articles Editor of Northwestern University Law Review.

During the Reagan Administration, Turley worked as an intern with the general counsel’s office of the National Security Agency (NSA).

Turley holds the Shapiro Chair for Public Interest Law at The George Washington University Law School, where he teaches torts, criminal procedure, and constitutional law.

He is the youngest person to receive an academic chair in the school's history.

He runs the Project for Older Prisoners (POP), the Environmental Law Clinic, and the Environmental Legislation Project.

Prior to joining George Washington University, he was on the faculty of Tulane University Law School.

His articles on legal and policy issues have appeared in national publications; he has had articles published in The New York Times, The Washington Post, USA Today, the Los Angeles Times, and the Wall Street Journal.

Since the 1990s, he has been a legal analyst for NBC News, CBS News, the BBC and Fox News, covering stories that ranged from the Clinton impeachment to presidential elections.

He is on the board of contributors of USA Today and is a columnist with The Hill.

He is currently a legal analyst with Fox News.

In appearances on Countdown with Keith Olbermann and The Rachel Maddow Show, he called for criminal prosecution of Bush administration officials for war crimes, including torture.

As an attorney, Turley has worked on notable cases in civil rights defense including the defense of Dr. Sami Al-Arian, NSA whistleblower David Faulk, protesters at the World Bank/IMF demonstrations in 2000, and the Brown family in their challenge to Utah polygamy laws.

He frequently appears in the national media as a commentator on a multitude of subjects ranging from the 2000 U.S. presidential election controversy to the Terri Schiavo case in 2005.

He often is a guest on Sunday talk shows, with more than two-dozen appearances on Meet the Press, ABC This Week, Face the Nation, and Fox News Sunday.

He served as a contributor on Countdown with Keith Olbermann from 2003 until 2011 on MSNBC, and later on Current TV in 2011 and early 2012.

In USA Today in October 2004, he argued for the legalization of polygamy, provoking responses from writers such as Stanley Kurtz.

He has opined that the Supreme Court is injecting itself into partisan politics.

He frequently has expressed the view that recent nominees to the court hold extreme views.

In October 2006, in an interview by Keith Olbermann of MSNBC, he expressed strong disapproval of the Military Commissions Act of 2006.

Commenting on the Military Commissions Act of 2006, which he contends does away with habeas corpus, Turley says, "It's something that no one thought—certainly I didn't think—was possible in the United States. And I am not too sure how we got to this point. But people clearly don't realize what a fundamental change it is about who we are as a country. What happened today changed us."

When the U.S. Senate was about to vote on Michael Mukasey for U.S. attorney general, Turley said, "The attorney general nominee's evasive remarks on 'water-boarding' should disqualify him from the job."

On the treatment of terrorism suspect José Padilla, Turley says, "The treatment of Padilla ranks as one of the most serious abuses after 9/11... This is a case that would have shocked the Framers. This is precisely what many of the drafters of the Constitution had in mind when they tried to create a system of checks and balances."

Turley considers the case of great import on the grounds that "Padilla's treatment by the military could happen to others."

Turley has said, "It is hard to read the Second Amendment and not honestly conclude that the Framers intended gun ownership to be an individual right."

When Congressional Democrats asked the Justice Department to investigate the CIA's destruction of terrorist interrogation tapes Turley said, "these are very serious allegations, that raise as many as six identifiable crimes ranging from contempt of Congress, to contempt of Justice, to perjury, to false statements."

Turley disagrees with the theory that dealing with bullies is just a part of growing up, claiming that they are "no more a natural part of learning than is parental abuse a natural part of growing up" and believes that "litigation could succeed in forcing schools to take bullying more seriously".

He has written extensively in opposition to the death penalty, noting, "Human Error remains a principal cause of botched executions... eventually society will be forced to deal directly with a fundamental moral question: Has death itself become the intolerable element of the death penalty?"

Turley has also served as counsel on prominent Federal cases including the defense of Area 51 workers, and as lead counsel in the 2014 challenge to the Affordable Care Act.

Turley grew up in Chicago as the youngest of five children.

His father, John (Jack) Turley was an international architect, partner at Skidmore, Owens, and Merrill, and the former associate of famed modernist architect Mies van der Rohe.

Turley has written about his father's influence on his constitutional theories.

His mother, Angela Piazza Turley, was a social worker and activist who was the former president of Jane Addams Hull-House in Chicago.

He is of Irish and Italian ancestry.