Jay Scott Bybee (born October 27, 1953) is an American lawyer and jurist serving as a senior U.S. circuit judge of the Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. He has published numerous articles in law journals and has taught as a senior fellow in constitutional law at William S. Boyd School of Law. His primary research interests are in constitutional and administrative law. While serving in the Bush administration as the assistant attorney general for the Office of Legal Counsel, Bybee signed the controversial "Torture Memos" in August 2002. These authorized "enhanced interrogation techniques" that were used in the systematic torture of detainees at Guantanamo Bay detention camp beginning in 2002 and at the Abu Ghraib facility following the United States' invasion of Iraq in 2003. These actions have been considered war crimes by other former members of the Bush Administration. Early life and education Born in Oakland, California, Bybee was raised in Clark County, Nevada. His family subsequently moved to Nashville, Tennessee, then Louisville, Kentucky. He graduated magna cum laude with a Bachelor of Arts degree from Brigham Young University in 1977, majoring in economics. He earned his Juris Doctor cum laude from BYU's J. Reuben Clark Law School in 1980. While in law school, he served on the editorial board of the BYU Law Review. Bybee spent one year as law clerk to Judge Donald S. Russell of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit. Career Academics From 1991 to 1999, Bybee taught at the Paul M. Hebert Law Center at Louisiana State University. Subsequently, he was a founding faculty member of the William S. Boyd School of Law at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, where he taught from 1999 to 2001. At both schools, he taught constitutional law, administrative law, and civil procedure. In 2000, Bybee was voted Professor of the Year. His particular areas of expertise are civil procedure, constitutional law, and the federal courts. Legal scholarship Bybee has co-authored two books, Powers Reserved for the People and the States: A History of the Ninth and Tenth Amendments (2006) (with Thomas B. McAffee and A. Christopher Bryant), and Religious Liberty Under the Free Exercise Clause. Bybee has also written more than 20 law review articles, notes, comments, and book chapters. Office of Legal Counsel Bybee served as the assistant attorney general for the Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) in the United