Washington — Eight years ago, President George W. Bush tapped John C. Yoo, a law professor at the University of California at Berkeley, to serve as deputy assistant attorney general in the U.S. Department of Justice’s Office of Legal Counsel. In that role, which he held from 2001 to 2003, Mr. Yoo wrote a series of widely criticized memoranda that argued that the president has the unilateral power to approve the use of coercive interrogation techniques — including techniques that many have called torture.

Now comes word that President Obama, who was inaugurated moments ago, will fill Mr. Yoo’s old position with one of the fiercest critics of those memos: Martin S. Lederman, a professor at the Georgetown University Law Center.

The appointment was first reported yesterday by Politico, and more details appeared this morning at Balkinization, a legal blog to which Mr. Lederman is a longtime contributor.

When Mr. Yoo testified before a Congressional committee last June, Mr. Lederman dissected his arguments in a post at Balkinization.

More of Mr. Lederman’s attacks on Mr. Yoo’s memos can be found here, here, and here. Further arguments from Mr. Yoo can be found here. —David Glenn