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Calling All Law Schools: Guantanamo Teach-In

By Jeralyn, Section Terror Detainees
Posted on Wed Apr 05, 2006 at 02:53:16 PM EST
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I just got off the phone with Seton Hall Law School Professor Mark Denbeaux (who spearheaded these two (pdf) Guantanamo reports.) He is very excited to announce that on October 5 there will be a national Guantanamo Teach-in. About 40 law schools have already signed up but they'd like to get 300 to 600. If you are a law student, or a law prof, please help spread the word.

On October 5th, academic institutions across the United States will join together in the first national effort to study the unprecedented action of our Government in indefinitely detaining at least 517 individuals claimed to be "enemy combatants" but not "prisoners of war." The Constitution, the Rule of Law and the Role of Lawyers will explore, in Teach-In format, the legal, political, and moral implications of the Detention Center at the United States Naval Base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

Details are here. Here's what's needed to participate. Some of the topics to be covered are here. You can e-mail for more information.

Also, a Guantanamo Bar Association of lawyers has been formed. More than 300 lawyers to date have joined.

More on the teach-in:

While all Americans agree on the need to deal effectively with the threat of terrorism, it is increasingly clear that few of the so-called "enemy combatants" at Guantanamo continue to pose a threat to the United States, if they ever did. A group of attorneys dedicated to the rule of law has long struggled to secure for the detainees the rudiments of American due process -- a fair hearing before impartial judges. The Guantanamo Teach-in will be your opportunity to understand, participate in, and critique these efforts.

Teach-Ins played an important role in earlier protest movements, providing a forum for professors and students to discuss and debate issues of intense national importance. The Guantanamo Teach-In will continue this noble tradition. It will be comprised of both a "virtual teach-in," which will be simulcast from Seton Hall, and on-campus teach-ins at, we hope, hundreds of campuses across the country.

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    Calling All Law Schools: Guantanamo Teach-In | 11 comments (11 topical)
    Re: Calling All Law Schools: Guantanamo Teach-In (none / 0) (#1)
    by Steven Sanderson on Wed Apr 05, 2006 at 04:07:32 PM EST
    What do you think the odds are that the law School at Jerry Falwell's Liberty University participates? Not as good as a snowball's chance in Hell I'll wager.

    Re: Calling All Law Schools: Guantanamo Teach-In (none / 0) (#2)
    by profmarcus on Wed Apr 05, 2006 at 05:19:58 PM EST
    this is good news and a terrific idea... sounds to me like a good way to open up national debate, something seriously lacking and sorely needed at a time when our constitution is in tatters... Visit my blog: And, yes, I DO take it personally

    Re: Calling All Law Schools: Guantanamo Teach-In (none / 0) (#3)
    by Edger on Wed Apr 05, 2006 at 11:27:32 PM EST
    I love this idea. This is great and impressive news. Professor Denbeaux, all the law students, the lawyers of the Guantanamo Bar Assn. deserve all the support and assistance from as many law schools as possible that can be mustered for this, not just for October 5, but to continue and expand the teach-ins across the country. While we sit here day after day arguing with and attempting fruitlessly to find ways to get it through the heads of the obtuse and mostly irrelevant trolls who come here with no other purposes in mind but to hijack and dominate threads with their endless robotlike repetition of administration and republican talking points, illogic, hate, fear, and seeming love of torture and deprivation of basic human rights, that a new path must be found, new methods must be developed and agreed upon, and that unthinking military and physical force creates the very problems the use of it seeks to overcome, it is the lawyers like Denbeaux, yourself Jeralyn, Terry Kindlon, and all the others, who take the fight directly to this criminal administration and into the law schools, who are playing the real and serious game against the real evil in this society, and who I sincerely believe will eventually catalyze and instigate the beginnings of the mass consciousness raising that must occur if the darkness that has descended is ever to be lifted. Long rambling sentence, but I hope I got my point across?

    Re: Calling All Law Schools: Guantanamo Teach-In (none / 0) (#4)
    by Edger on Wed Apr 05, 2006 at 11:54:05 PM EST
    And when you're looking for your freedom (nobody seems to care) And you can't find the door (can't find it anywhere) When there's nothing to believe in Still you're coming back, you're running back You're coming back for more
    --Take It To The Limit

    Re: Calling All Law Schools: Guantanamo Teach-In (none / 0) (#5)
    by Talkleft Visitor on Thu Apr 06, 2006 at 12:13:53 AM EST
    Nothing I'd like better than a bunch of Democrat lawyers tying themselves to Islamofascists. You, they got zero chance in law and less than zero in public opinion.

    Re: Calling All Law Schools: Guantanamo Teach-In (none / 0) (#6)
    by Talkleft Visitor on Thu Apr 06, 2006 at 12:20:02 AM EST
    Edger, great tune, I just love the Eagles....still.

    Re: Calling All Law Schools: Guantanamo Teach-In (none / 0) (#7)
    by jondee on Thu Apr 06, 2006 at 12:23:51 AM EST
    Islamofascists. Thats original. The handle says it all: do we need say.. about four thousand gallons of water sent through our brain? I think we do.

    Re: Calling All Law Schools: Guantanamo Teach-In (none / 0) (#8)
    by Edger on Thu Apr 06, 2006 at 06:48:42 AM EST
    Jondee, I don't know that any amount of water would have any effect at all. His post immediately reminded me of Sam Cayhall, the character played by Gene Hackman in Grisham's "The Chamber":
    Hackman's character makes the argument that he who harbors racism in his heart is just as guilty as a Klansman, a bit of reasoning--that the sin in your heart is as terrible as the sin you commit--that bedevils Christian thinkers.
    Maybe he's using a ghost writer to write his posts, and doesn't know it.

    Re: Calling All Law Schools: Guantanamo Teach-In (none / 0) (#9)
    by Edger on Thu Apr 06, 2006 at 06:54:20 AM EST
    The Chamber

    Re: Calling All Law Schools: Guantanamo Teach-In (none / 0) (#10)
    by Talkleft Visitor on Thu Apr 06, 2006 at 02:41:48 PM EST
    Posted by Jondee April 6, 2006 01:23 AM Islamofascists. Thats original. The handle says it all: do we need say.. about four thousand gallons of water sent through our brain? I think we do.
    Yes, Islamofascist is SO passe, besides if anyone is a fascist it's GEORGE BUSH!! Thanks for the clever remark Jondee!

    Re: Calling All Law Schools: Guantanamo Teach-In (none / 0) (#11)
    by jondee on Thu Apr 06, 2006 at 02:57:04 PM EST
    Its a movie reference. And youre welcome. Btw, Bush isnt a fascist, he's just a mediocre celebrity spokesperson for them.

    Calling All Law Schools: Guantanamo Teach-In | 11 comments (11 topical)