Legal Commentary

Last night I went to go see the Bread & Puppet Theatre's latest production, The Divine Reality Comedy.  For those unfamiliar, B&P is a mischievous band of political theater-pranksters that's been around since days of yore.  Sometimes, they're whimsical and circus-like; other times, like last night, tinged with a sharp political bite.  Last night's performance started with "Paradise," skewering American consumerism; continued into "Purgatory," talking about our security state;  and concluded in "Inferno," which depicted the waterboarding and torturing of Guantanamo detainees -- all done on a large-scale puppet.

By coincidence, I'd just heard a local public radio discussion (sorry I can't find the link) about the proliferation of works of art being made about Guantanamo Bay.  Gitmo, surely the greatest human rights abuse in our nation's history, has already inspired several remarkable works of art, including the documentary "Taxi to the Dark Side," Clive Stafford Smith's lawyer-memoir-expose, "Eight O'Clock Ferry to the Windward Side" (read NY Times review here), a powerful book of poetry by detainees and a hard-to-see (and hard-to-watch) Michael Winterbottom documentary.  It's a symbol and reality that has inspired artists to action.

But maybe not law prawfs.  Every so often, as a law professor teaching law & religion, I feel like we're fiddling while our empire burns all around us.   Whatever our political views, isn't it awkward that we are legal academics working during the greatest erosion of legal rights our country has ever seen?  Both on the "purgatory" and "inferno" levels -- i.e., for all of us who now get X-rayed at the airport, and for those unhappy souls at Camp X-Ray in Cuba.  Here we are, academics debating the angels dancing on legal pinheads, while prisoners are tortured and held without due process a few miles to the south.  I feel like our entire legal generation has an asterisk next to it.