When I was invited to give a speech in Florida this month as part of a fiftieth anniversary commemoration of the decision in Gideon v. Wainwright, the first thing I did, of course, was to pull out my tattered copy of Gideon's Trumpet, Anthony Lewis's superb and evergreen account of the story behind the Supreme Court case guaranteeing indigent criminal defendants a right to counsel.
September 17 is Constitution Day, and here’s a suggestion for how you might celebrate.
Gather some patriots -- cakes and ale and three-cornered hats optional -- and as a party game, see if your guests can answer some basic questions about the Constitution from a 1997 poll commissioned by the National Constitution Center. For example,
Any declaration of war has unforeseen consequences. Our government's decision to react to the events of 9/11 by declaring "war" on terrorism has posed an enormous threat to our fundamental rights and even to the structures of our democracy, as we have been told that we should just trust the government to decide what is best for us. And many innocent people have been among the collateral damage.
(Editor's note: We know it's no longer Women's History Month, but we still have a lot more to say! We'll be featuring a few more posts in April.)
Then: Around ACLU circles, one hears a lot about founding father Roger Baldwin, but less about founding mother Crystal Eastman. Eastman attended New York University Law School, graduating second in the class of 1905. She cofounded the National Civil Liberties Bureau to protect World War I conscientious objectors and outspoken dissenters -- in her words: “To maintain something over here that will be worth coming back to when the weary war is over.” The NCLB grew into the American Civil Liberties Union in 1920, with Baldwin at the head and Eastman functioning as attorney in charge.
When Liz Cheney released an ad charging that attorneys who had defended terrorism suspects were not fit to work in the Department of Justice, individual lawyers and the organized bar reacted with across-the-board outrage. Some, like former Attorney General Michael Mukasey, took the occasion to argue that the same protection and understanding is due the government lawyers who wrote the memos condoning torture by American agents, because the attacks on the lawyers are "all of a piece."
I recently had the fascinating experience of speaking at the U.S. Army War College about civil liberties and national security, as part of a weeklong seminar the college was conducting on national security issues. Many thought that it was surprising that I had been invited by the military and surprising that I was willing to speak in a venue that they expected to be a lion's den for an ACLU spokesperson. Going into this experience, I knew that the caricature of the ACLU as anti-military is as inapt as the caricature of the ACLU as anti-religion. After my visit, I now see far more clearly that the caricature of the military as anti-ACLU is equally false.
My first thought after the election was that the ACLU could certainly teach the country a lot about how to run a presidential election. All efforts were made to allow every one of the eligible voters (the 83-person National Board of Directors) to participate in the process and vote. There was no negative campaigning; the debates were only about the issues; and every vote was counted.
