Excerpt: “If you agree with us that the Bush Administration is
criminal, join your fellow citizens on the 31st and the 4th to declare that the
World Can’t Wait.”
STAND UP FOR THE LAW: Law Students Working to Expose the
Legal Distortions of the Bush Administration
On Tuesday, January 24, over thirty Georgetown University
law students turned their backs on Attorney General Alberto Gonzales’ address
to the law school community.
Once the Attorney General’s presentation began, we in the audience
began to stand up one by one to turn our backs, with five students donning
black Abu Ghraib-style hoods and hoisting a large banner emblazoned
with a version of Benjamin Franklin’s famous quote, “Those who would sacrifice
liberty in the name of security deserve neither.” Several students walked out, and several
others, not involved in the protest plans, rose and turned their backs as
well. Many of the students had no experience
with any form of political activism but nonetheless rose in silent protest. This small and simple action captured a
remarkable amount of international media of attention: evening news channels,
radio networks, and newspapers as far away as India carried the story, and many
featured photographs of the protest.
However, the most impressive response was from other
American citizens, who wrote to the school, the professors and to the students
to express their gratitude and support.
This outpouring of popular sentiment after such a small and hastily-planned
protest was profoundly moving. It
reflected a deep sense of frustration, powerlessness, and anger at the Bush
Administration’s campaign to convince America of the legality of warrantless
domestic spying, and an inability to adequately get that message across.
We learned that we are not
alone, or even in the
minority. Many commented in one way or
another on the fact that we were law students(and many lawyers wrote to
say that
they were proud of their profession and/or law school for the first
time in years. Many others seemed to reference the fact that
this is what we were supposed to do, as law students, as lawyers and as
Americans: to expose the Bush Administration arguments for what they
are:
utterly without precedent or legal merit, and to argue for our laws,
and in so
doing, for our country.
Our protest was exhilarating, but it’s not enough. We want to continue drawing attention to the
fact that the Constitutional interpretation offered by the Attorney General(
with no limiting principle on the president’s war powers(is far too dangerous
to our democracy to be taken sitting down. Even as law students we know the law
well enough to see that, and the overwhelming majority of the legal community
is on our side.
We are honored to have the opportunity to join voices with World
Can’t Wait on January 31st and February 4th to declare a State of Emergency, a state in
which the rule of law has been disbanded, and to demand the Constitution be
respected.
We are well past the point of pretending there are two sides
to issues like spying, torture, detention without charge, and war without
end.
We invite other law students, professors, and the citizenry
at large, to educate ourselves and others on the actual state of the law; we
want to empower others to take a stand on torture, on the dangerous expansion
of the executive, and on the ongoing assault on the First Amendment freedoms
our protest relied upon. These issues
have clear legal and moral answers. Not
only do we reject the Administration’s impoverished legal arguments, we also
reject the claims to moral superiority that are still being made in the face of
a succession of national outrages.
Patriotism does not mean going along with the Administration
when it consistently violates laws of humanity and morality. From Guantanamo Bay to Abu Ghraib; from
Katrina to wiretapping of citizens; from the GOP’s legacy of corruption to
secret prisons, extraordinary renditions, and never-ending warfare, the time is
past due for Americans to seize whatever
opportunities they can and come together to reject such drastic departures from foundational American laws and
ideals.
The choice between liberty and security is a false one, as
is belied by the fact that the Administration has actually succeeded in making
us less safe than we were five years ago(something military leaders and foreign
policy experts widely acknowledge to be the case.
The current situation has the makings of a Constitutional
crisis, with the Administration pushing for unlimited war powers in an
endless war. If we do not counter a
campaign of fear and lies with arguments for truth and law, our country will be
fundamentally and irrevocably altered in the months ahead. It is imperative that citizens remember the
cautionary words of a Founding Father and the essential truth that democracy
cannot thrive without meaningful dissent(and speak out.
To that end, we are organizing law students, professors, and
citizens from across the political spectrum on a campaign of education and
action, to assert the illegality of the Administration’s legal arguments and to
convince our fellow citizens and their representatives that the Constitution,
our domestic laws, and international law all have limits that apply to the
Executive Branch, and that those limits have long since been breached.
If you agree with us that the Bush Administration is
criminal, join your fellow citizens on the 31st and the 4th to declare that the
World Can’t Wait.
We must reclaim our democracy!
From the Georgetown Stand Up for the Law organization