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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 

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