Jay Bybee

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Jay Bybee.
Jay Bybee.

Jay S. Bybee (born October 27, 1953 in Oakland, California) is a federal judge on the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. He was originally nominated by President George W. Bush on May 22, 2002 and was confirmed by the United States Senate 74-19 on March 13, 2003.

Bybee graduated magna cum laude from Brigham Young University where he earned his Juris Doctor from the J. Reuben Clark Law School at BYU. He served as the Assistant Attorney General for the Office of Legal Counsel ("OLC") in the United States Justice Department from October 2001 to March 2003.

Prior to going to the Justice Department, he was on the faculty of the Paul M. Hebert Law Center at Louisiana State University and was a founding faculty member of the University of Nevada, Las Vegas law school faculty.

He has published numerous articles in law journals and is interested primarily in constitutional and administrative law.

During Bybee's tenure, OLC authored the controversial August 2002 Bybee memo on detainee interrogation, more commonly known as the "Torture Memo," a Justice Department memo interpreting the statutory term of art "torture" as defined in 18 U.S.C. 2340. The "Bybee memo," was reportedly written in large part by his Deputy Assistant Attorney General John Yoo. The memo was a response to a CIA request for legal advice, a request routed to OLC by then White House General Counsel Alberto Gonzalez. The CIA inquired whether, after the September 11, 2001 attacks, it could aggressively interrogate suspected high-ranking Al-Qaeda members captured outside the United States. Section 2340 implements, in part, the obligations of the United States under the Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman and Degrading Treatment or Punishment.

Among other things, the memo concluded that "physical pain amounting to torture must be equivalent in intensity to the pain accompanying serious physical injury, such as organ failure, impairment of bodily function, or even death." It also concluded that for purely mental pain to constitute torture it "must result in significant psychological harm of significant duration, e.g., lasting for months or even years."

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Preceded by
Procter Ralph Hug, Jr.		 Judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit
2003-present		 Succeeded by
incumbent