Human Rights Law

Richard Falk Delivers Keynote at NLG Convention

Posted on October 27, 2009
On October 15, Professor Richard Falk delivered the keynote address, "Imperial Wars and the Obama Presidency: The Role of Law," at the National Lawyers Guild convention in Seattle. He was introduced by NLG president Marjorie Cohn. You can watch it at:http://www...

New Film, "Tortured Law," Features Marjorie Cohn

Posted on October 08, 2009
Alliance for Justice has just released a documentary film called ?Tortured Law.? This short film examines the role lawyers played in authorizing torture under the Bush Administration. It features excerpts from Marjorie Cohn?s congressional testimony.

National Lawyers Guild, Other Human Rights Groups Send Open Letter to Eric Holder

Posted on October 08, 2009
Seventeen human rights and civil rights organizations and 45 prominent lawyers and civic leaders have sent a letter to Attorney General Eric Holder last week urging him to appoint a special independent prosecutor to investigate and prosecute Bush officials and lawyers involved in setting illegal interrogation policies...

"The Legal Avenger," an interview of Marjorie Cohn

Posted on September 26, 2009
Covers illegality of Iraq and Afghanistan wars, prosecuting war crimes, the duty to disobey unlawful orders - See:http://seminal.firedoglake.com/diary/8498

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Legendary Lawyer Doris Brin Walker Dies; Represented Angela Davis, Smith Act Defendants

Posted on August 16, 2009
Doris ?Dobby? Brin Walker, the first woman president of the National Lawyers Guild, died on August 13 at the age of 90. Doris was a brilliant lawyer and a tenacious defender of human rights. The only woman in her University of California Berkeley law school class, Doris defied the odds throughout her life, achieving significant victories for labor, and political activists...

Agent Orange Continues to Poison Vietnam

Posted on June 14, 2009
From 1961 to 1971, the U.S. military sprayed Vietnam with Agent Orange, which contained large quantities of Dioxin, in order to defoliate the trees for military objectives. Dioxin is one of the most dangerous chemicals known to man. It has been recognized by the World Health Organization as a carcinogen (causes cancer) and by the American Academy of Medicine as a teratogen (causes birth defects)...

National Lawyers Guild Calls for Reasoned Analysis of Sotomayor Nomination

Posted on May 30, 2009
New York--In the wake of President Obama's nomination of Judge Sonia Sotomayor to the United States Supreme Court, the National Lawyers Guild (NLG) encourages a reasoned analysis of Sotomayor's candidacy. Critics are focusing on accusations of judicial activism and identity politics rather than engaging in sound examination of her legal qualifications...

Obama?s Guantánamo Appeasement Plan

Posted on May 25, 2009
Two days after his inauguration, President Obama pledged to close Guantánamo within one year. The Republicans, led by Senators John McCain, Mitch McConnell and Pat Roberts, immediately launched a concerted campaign to assail the new president. They claimed his plan would release dangerous terrorists into U...

Stanford Anti-War Alumni, Students Call for Condi War Crimes Probe

Posted on May 06, 2009
During the Vietnam War, Stanford students succeeded in banning secret military research from campus. Last weekend, 150 activist alumni and present Stanford students targeted Condoleezza Rice for authorizing torture and misleading Americans into the illegal Iraq War...

Condi Channels Nixon: If the President Says So, It?s Not Illegal

Posted on April 30, 2009
On April 27, Condoleezza Rice had a brief Q & A with some Stanford students:Condi was extremely uncomfortable, defensive and nervous. She was rude to the first student, interrupted him and yelled at him. When asked by another student about a recent report that she authorized waterboarding, Condi said, ?I didn't authorize anything...

Torture Used to Link Saddam with 9/11

Posted on April 23, 2009
When I testified last year before the House Judiciary Committee?s Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights, and Civil Liberties about Bush interrogation policies, Congressman Trent Franks (R-Ariz) stated that former CIA Director Michael Hayden had confirmed that the Bush administration only waterboarded Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, Abu Zabaydah, and Abd al-Rahim al-Nashirit for one minute each...

Bush Memos Reveal Policy of Cruelty; Obama Refuses to Enforce the Law

Posted on April 22, 2009
In response to a Freedom of Information Act request by the ACLU, President Obama released four Bush-era memos that describe unimaginably brutal techniques and provide ?legal? justification for clearly illegal acts of torture and cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment...

Spain Investigates What America Should

Posted on April 06, 2009
A Spanish court has initiated criminal proceedings against six former officials of the Bush administration. John Yoo, Jay Bybee, David Addington, Alberto Gonzales, William Haynes and Douglas Feith may face charges in Spain for authorizing torture at Guantánamo Bay...

Memos Provide Blueprint for Police State

Posted on March 04, 2009

War Criminals, Including Their Lawyers, Must Be Prosecuted

Posted on February 19, 2009
Since he took office, President Obama has instituted many changes that break with the policies of the Bush administration. The new president has ordered that no government agency will be allowed to torture, that the U.S. prison at Guantánamo will be shuttered, and that the CIA?s secret black sites will be closed down...

A Call to End All Renditions

Posted on February 10, 2009
Binyam Mohamed, an Ethiopian residing in Britain, said he was tortured after being sent to Morocco and Afghanistan in 2002 by the U.S. government. Mohamed was transferred to Guantánamo in 2004 and all terrorism charges against him were dismissed last year...

Israel?s Collective Punishment of Gaza

Posted on January 06, 2009
Since Israel began its war on Gaza 11 days ago, more than 560 Palestinians ? about a quarter of them civilians ? have been killed. Some two thousand Gazans, including hundreds of children, have been wounded. Israel?s ?Operation Cast Lead? marks an escalation of Israel?s two-year blockade of the Gaza Strip which has deprived 1...

Cheney Throws Down Gauntlet, Defies Prosecution for War Crimes

Posted on December 18, 2008
Dick Cheney has publicly confessed to ordering war crimes. Asked about waterboarding in an ABC News interview, Cheney replied, ?I was aware of the program, certainly, and involved in helping get the process cleared.? He also said he still believes waterboarding was an appropriate method to use on terrorism suspects...

Obama: Ratify the Women?s Convention Soon

Posted on December 05, 2008
Nearly 30 years after President Jimmy Carter signed the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW), the United States remains the only democracy that refuses to ratify the most significant treaty guaranteeing gender equality...

Guantánamo Justice Delayed Seven Years

Posted on November 24, 2008
Since the Bush administration began transporting men and boys to Guantánamo Bay in January 2002, it has tried to prevent them from presenting their cases before a neutral federal judge. Indeed, the naval base was turned into a prison camp precisely to keep the detainees away from impartial courts...

NLG Calls on President-elect Obama to Close Guantanamo, Opposes Establishment of National Security Courts

Posted on November 12, 2008
After September 11, 2001, George W. Bush established the Guantánamo Bay prison to enable the United States to imprison non-Americans indefinitely outside the reach and protection of both U.S. and international law. The military commissions and their trial procedures, created under the Military Commissions Act of 2006, have been universally condemned by jurists, scholars and human rights specialists as violating minimum fair trial standards and of being a sham intended to secure convictions...

Obama Spells New Hope for Human Rights

Posted on November 09, 2008
Celebrations of Barack Obama?s election as President of the United States erupted in countries around the world. From Europe to Africa to the Middle East, people were jubilant. After suffering though eight years of an administration that violated more human rights than any other in U...

What About Constitutional Powers?

Posted on October 29, 2008
Institute for Public Accuracy915 National Press Building, Washington, D.C. 20045(202) 347-0020 * http://www.accuracy.org * ipa@accuracy.org___________________________________________________Wednesday, October 29, 2008What About Constitutional Powers? Two ViewsMARJORIE COHN, Libertad48@san...

A Palin Theocracy

Posted on September 11, 2008
John McCain?s selection of Sarah Palin as his vice presidential running mate has invigorated a lackluster campaign. The media can?t stop talking about her. Given McCain?s age and state of health (his medical file was nearly 1,200 pages long), Palin would indeed be a heartbeat away from becoming President...

Preemptive Strikes Against Protest at RNC

Posted on September 02, 2008
In the months leading up to the Republican National Convention, the FBI-led Minneapolis Joint Terrorist Task Force actively recruited people to infiltrate vegan groups and other leftist organizations and report back about their activities. On May 21, the Minneapolis City Pages ran a recruiting story called "Moles Wanted...

End the Occupation of Iraq - and Afghanistan

Posted on July 28, 2008
So far, Bush's plan to maintain a permanent U.S. military presence in Iraq has been stymied by resistance from the Iraqi government. Barack Obama's timetable for withdrawal of American troops has evidently been joined by Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, Bush has mentioned a "time horizon," and John McCain has waffled...

John Yoo, David Addington Stonewall Congress

Posted on June 26, 2008
JOHN YOO, DAVID ADDINGTON STONEWALL CONGRESS; NATIONAL LAWYERS GUILD URGES SPECIAL PROSECUTOR, CONGRESSIONAL WAR CRIMES COMMISSIONToday the House Judiciary Committee's Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights and Civil Liberties continued its investigation into the role played by key administration lawyers in the development of aggressive interrogation techniques...

Scalia Cites False Information in Boumediene Dissent

Posted on June 20, 2008
To bolster his argument that the Guantánamo detainees should be denied the right to prove their innocence in federal courts, Justice Antonin Scalia wrote in his dissent in Boumediene v. Bush: "At least 30 of those prisoners hitherto released from Guantánamo have returned to the battlefield...

Supreme Court Checks and Balances in Boumediene

Posted on June 16, 2008
After the Supreme Court handed down its long-awaited opinion, upholding habeas corpus rights for the Guantánamo detainees, I was invited to appear on The O'Reilly Factor with guest host Laura Ingraham. Although she is a lawyer and former law clerk for Justice Clarence Thomas, Ingraham has no use for our judicial branch of government, noting that the justices are "unelected...

NLG Says Politics Motivated Decision in Cuban Five Case

Posted on June 05, 2008
Two Judges on Three-Judge Panel Uphold Conspiracy to Commit Murder Conviction Despite Government?s Lack of EvidenceNew York. The National Lawyers Guild (NLG) believes that politics influenced yesterday?s federal appeals court decision upholding the convictions of five Cuban patriots accused of spying in the United States...

NLG Urges United States to Sign and Ratify Treaty Banning Use of Cluster Bombs

Posted on June 05, 2008
NLG Also Renews Its Call for the U.S. to Ratify Land Mine TreatyNew York. The National Lawyers Guild is disturbed to see that, once again, the rhetoric of the United States government about building peace and security is directly contradicted by its actions...

Hillary Invokes Assassination

Posted on May 24, 2008
For weeks, pundits have speculated about why Hillary Clinton insists on remaining in the primary race when Barack Obama has all but clinched the Democratic presidential nomination. On Friday, Clinton answered that question. It appears she's waiting in the wings for something dreadful to befall Obama...

National Lawyers Guild Calls for Special Prosecutor, Issues White Paper on Torture Liability

Posted on May 12, 2008
New York. The National Lawyers Guild (NLG) calls on Congress to appoint a Special Prosecutor, independent of the Department of Justice, to investigate and prosecute high Bush officials and lawyers including John Yoo for their role in the torture of prisoners in U...

Congressional Testimony of Marjorie Cohn on Torture Policy

Posted on May 08, 2008
Testimony of Marjorie Cohn"From the Department of Justice to Guantánamo Bay: Administration Lawyers and Administration Interrogation Rules" Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights, and Civil LibertiesHouse Judiciary CommitteeMay 6, 2008What does torture have in common with genocide, slavery, and wars of aggression? They are all "jus cogens...

National Lawyers Guild President toTestify on Torture Liability Before House Subcommittee on Constitution, Civil Rights and Civil Liberties

Posted on May 01, 2008
On Tuesday, May 6, 2008, National Lawyers Guild President Marjorie Cohn will provide testimony at a hearing titled ?From the Department of Justice to Guantánamo Bay: Administration Lawyers and Administration Interrogation Rules,? before the Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights, and Civil Liberties of the House Judiciary Committee...

Center for Constitutional Rights Supports National Lawyers Guild Call for Dismissal and Prosecution of John Yoo

Posted on April 17, 2008
On April 1, a secret 81-page memo written by former Deputy Assistant Attorney General John Yoo in March 2003 was made public. In that memo, Yoo advised the Bush administration that the Department of Justice's Office of Legal Counsel would not enforce U...

National Lawyers Guild Calls on Boalt Hall to Dismiss Law Professor John Yoo, Whose Torture Memos Led to Commission of War Crimes

Posted on April 09, 2008
New York. In a memorandum written the same month George W. Bush invaded Iraq, Boalt Hall law professor John Yoo said the Department of Justice would construe US criminal laws not to apply to the President's detention and interrogation of enemy combatants...

National Lawyers Guild Welcomes Discussion of Racism Occasioned by Senator Barack Obama's Historic Speech

Posted on March 24, 2008
In response to highly-publicized sound-bites from sermons by Rev. Jeremiah Wright of Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago, Sen. Barack Obama delivered an historic speech on racism, titled "A More Perfect Union."Rev. Wright had strongly criticized the U...

Beware an Attack on Iran

Posted on March 17, 2008
Is the Bush administration ramping up for an attack on Iran? Thesigns seem to point in that direction. On March 11, Navy Adm. WilliamFallon, commander of the U.S. forces in the Middle East, retired earlybecause of differences with Washington on Iran policy...

National Lawyers Guild Calls on Congress to Override Bush Veto of Intelliigence Authorization Bill

Posted on March 11, 2008
New York. The National Lawyers Guild calls on Congress to override George W. Bush?s veto?in direct contravention of the advice of military commanders?of the Intelligence Authorization Bill that contained a provision limiting the Central Intelligence Agency?s ability to engage in the torture technique known as waterboarding...

Thom Hartmann Interview with Marjorie Cohn

Posted on February 29, 2008

National Lawyers Guild Calls on Justice Antonin Scalia to Recuse Himself From Interrogation-related Cases

Posted on February 18, 2008
The National Lawyers Guild calls on Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia to recuse himself from any case coming before the Supreme Court involving the constitutionality of torture as an interrogation technique. In a BBC interview that aired on Tuesday, Scalia defended the use of torture to extract information from persons in custody by law enforcement officials in some cases...

Injustice at Guantanamo: Torture Evidence and the Military Commissions Act

Posted on February 15, 2008
The Bush administration has announced its intention to try six alleged al Qaeda members at Guantánamo under the Military Commissions Act. That Act forbids the admission of evidence extracted by torture, although it permits evidence obtained by cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment if it was secured before December 30, 2005...

The National Lawyers Guild Condemns Senate Grant of Immunity to Lawbreaking Telecommunications Companies

Posted on February 14, 2008
Responding to fear-mongering by the Bush administration, the Senate voted on February 12 to give retroactive immunity to the telecommunications companies that have turned over our telephone and Internet communications to the government. These companies have violated several laws, including the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), Title III, the Communications Act, and the Stored Communications Act, as well as the First and Fourth Amendments to the Constitution...

Senate Poised to Capitulate to Cheney's Fear-Mongering

Posted on January 24, 2008
After a January 24 debate in the Senate on amending the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, the Senate appears ready to capitulate once again to the Bush administration's agenda of sacrificing liberty for questionable security.On the day before Congress was slated to take up this issue, Dick Cheney addressed the Heritage Foundation, the most influential right-wing think tank...

Cheney Impeachment Gains Traction in House Judiciary Committee

Posted on January 21, 2008
Nine out of 23 Democratic members of the House Judiciary Committee favor starting impeachment hearings against Vice-President Dick Cheney. Six of the nine are co-sponsors of H.R. 799, which contains three articles of impeachment. Articles I and II of H...

The Torture Tape Cover-up: How High Does It Go?

Posted on December 26, 2007
When the hideous photographs of torture and abuse emerged from Abu Ghraib in the spring of 2004, they created a public relations disaster for the Bush administration. The White House had painstakingly worked to capitalize on the 9/11 attacks by creating a "war on terror...

Bush Still Spinning Nukes in Iran

Posted on December 18, 2007
The unanimous conclusion of the 16 U.S. intelligence agencies, that Iran ceased pursuing a program of nuclear weapons in 2003, has dealt a severe blow to the Bush-Cheney agenda of forcible regime change in Iran. For several months, the rhetoric emerging from the White House escalated to the point that many observers predicted Bush would attack Iran before he leaves office...

Guantánamo Detainees' Fate at Stake in Boumediene

Posted on December 03, 2007
The Supreme Court will hear arguments on Wednesday in Boumediene v. Bush. Most of the 34 detainees whose fate hangs in the balance in this case were brought to Guantánamo after being picked up by bounty hunters or tribesmen in Afghanistan and Pakistan...

Operation Iraqi Freedom Exposed: Bush Negotiates Permanent Presence in Iraq

Posted on December 03, 2007
The revelation that Bush will sign an agreement for a permanent U.S. military presence in Iraq before his term is up confirms the real reason he invaded Iraq and changed its regime.It was never about weapons of mass destruction. It was never about ties between Saddam and al Qaeda...

National Lawyers Guild and Society of American Law Teachers Strongly Oppose Homegrown Terrorism Act

Posted on November 27, 2007
On October 23, 2007, the House of Representatives passed the Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act of 2007 by a vote of 404-6. The bill will be referred out of committee this week and will then go to the Senate floor. The National Lawyers Guild and the Society of American Law Teachers strongly oppose this legislation because it will likely lead to the criminalization of beliefs, dissent and protest, and invite more draconian surveillance of Internet communications...

Remembering Victor Rabinowitz: Legal Giant of the Left

Posted on November 25, 2007
On November 16, 2007, Victor Rabinowitz, one of the giants of the legal profession and a tireless fighter for social justice, died at the age of 96. One of the founders of the National Lawyers Guild 70 years ago, Victor defended unpopular clients when other lawyers were afraid to touch them...

Preventing the Impending War on Iran

Posted on November 23, 2007
Rhetoric flowing out of the White House indicates the Bush administration is planning a military attack on Iran. Officials in Saudi Arabia, a close Bush ally, think the handwriting is on the wall. "George Bush's tone makes us think he has decided what he is going to do," according to Rihab Massoud, Prince Bandar ben Sultan's right-hand man...

Musharraf Plays Bush for a Fool

Posted on November 19, 2007
Pakistan's President General Pervez Musharraf declared a state of emergency on November 3rd after the Pakistani Supreme Court indicated it would overturn the results of an illegitimate election that would have extended Musharraf's term as president. Musharraf quickly fired the Supreme Court justices who planned to rule against him...

Michael Mukasey: Another Loyal Bushie

Posted on October 21, 2007
The Michael Mukasey Senate Judiciary Committee confirmation hearing has demonstrated that Mukasey cannot be relied upon to function independently as U.S. Attorney General. Nevertheless, Senators on the Senate Judiciary Committee seem so thrilled that Mukasey is not Alberto Gonzales that they're willing to vote for him even though he's another loyal Bushie...

Unrepentant, Bush Denies Torture

Posted on October 08, 2007
The April 2004 publication of grotesque photographs of naked Iraqis piled on top of each other, forced to masturbate, and led around on leashes like dogs, sent shock waves around the world. George W. Bush declared, ?I shared a deep disgust that those prisoners were treated the way they were treated...

Pursue Diplomacy, Not War, With Iran

Posted on September 24, 2007
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad?s visit to the United States has prompted an outcry, including protests and tabloid headlines calling him ?evil? and a ?madman.? As Juan Cole says, "The real reason his visit is controversial is that the American right has decided the United States needs to go to war against Iran...

Erwin Chemerinsky and the Post-9/11 Attack on Academic Freedom

Posted on September 15, 2007
One week after renowned legal scholar Erwin Chemerinsky was offered the position of dean of the new law school at the University of California at Irvine, Chancellor Michael Drake withdrew the offer, informing Professor Chemerinsky he had proved to be "too politically controversial...

Bush Plans War on Iran

Posted on September 02, 2007
The Sunday Times of London is reporting that the Pentagon has plans for three days of massive air strikes against 1,200 targets in Iran. Last week, Alexis Debat, director of terrorism and national security at the Nixon Center, told a meeting of The National Interest, a conservative foreign policy journal, that the military did not intend to carry out "pinprick strikes" against Iranian nuclear facilities...

Bush's Killing Fields: Turning Iraq Into Vietnam

Posted on August 25, 2007
Desperate to shore up support for continuing his unpopular war on Iraq, George W. Bush drew an analogy with Vietnam when he addressed the Veterans of Foreign Wars. "The price of America's withdrawal [from Vietnam] was paid by millions of innocent citizens," Bush declared...

FISA Revised: A Blank Check for Domestic Spying

Posted on August 09, 2007
Responding to fear-mongering by the Bush administration, the Democrat-led Congress put its stamp of approval on the unconstitutional wiretapping of Americans.George W. Bush has perfected the art of ramming ill-considered legislation through Congress by hyping emergencies that don't exist...

Time for an Independent Counsel

Posted on July 30, 2007
Congressional leaders are calling for the appointment of a special counsel to investigate possible perjury charges against Alberto Gonzales. As we saw during the Watergate scandal, the executive branch cannot be counted on to investigate itself.Watergate led to the enactment of the Ethics in Government Act...

Showdown Looming Over Executive Privilege

Posted on July 24, 2007
George W. Bush's presidential tenure has been marked by one cover-up after another. But the masterful spinning of Karl Rove and a compliant media enabled Bush to get away with it. Now that the Democrat-controlled Congress is investigating administration malfeasance, Bush's cover-ups have come cloaked in the guise of "executive privilege...

Iraqis Will Be the Deciders

Posted on July 19, 2007
As Congress debates whether to withdraw U.S. troops from Iraq, George Bush is trying to buy time. He and Dick Cheney have no intention of ever pulling out of Iraq.Cheney commissioned a 2000 report by the neoconservative Project for a New American Century, which said ?the need for a substantial American force presence in the Gulf transcends the issue of the regime of Saddam Hussein...

Reining In an Out-of-Control Executive

Posted on July 17, 2007
Our Founding Fathers created three separate but co-equal branches of government to check and balance each other so no one branch would become all powerful. Indeed, James Madison wrote in the Federalist Papers, "The preservation of liberty requires that the three great departments of power should be separate and distinct...

The Opportunistic Commuter-in-Chief: The use and misuse of presidential clemency power

Posted on July 06, 2007
When he announced the commutation of Scooter Libby's 30-month sentence, George W. Bush cited the ways Libby has and will suffer: damage to his reputation, the suffering of his wife and children, large fines, and the "long-lasting" consequences of being a convicted felon...

Targeting Dissent: FBI Spying on the National Lawyers Guild

Posted on June 26, 2007
In 1937, the American Bar Association refused to allow people of color to join its ranks. With the blessing of President Franklin D. Roosevelt, the National Lawyers Guild was founded as a multi-racial alternative to the ABA. The Guild's founding members included the attorney general, several judges, some congressmen, and the head of the National Labor Relations Board...

Repression in Oaxaca: One Year Anniversary of State?s Bloody Attack on Popular Movements

Posted on June 12, 2007
There's an Aztec legend of a warrior who was in love with a princess. When he left to go into battle, the lovers promised each other eternal love. The warrior died in battle, but to fulfill his promise to the princess, he came back as a brilliant orange flower...

No Unlawful Enemy Combatants at Guantanamo

Posted on June 06, 2007
In 2002, Donald Rumsfeld famously called the detainees at Guantánamo "the worst of the worst." General Richard B. Myers, former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, warned they were "very dangerous people who would gnaw hydraulic lines in the back of a C-17 to bring it down...