FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
December 18, 2003
Contact:
Michael Avery, NLG President, 617-335-5023,
Heidi Boghosian, NLG Executive Director, 212-679-5100 ext. 11,
director@nlg.org
NATIONAL LAWYERS GUILD PRAISES SECOND CIRCUIT PADILLA v. RUMSFELD DECISION
The National Lawyers Guild announced today that it was thrilled with
the decision of the Second Circuit Court of Appeals in Padilla v.
Rumsfeld, holding that President Bush does not have the unilateral
authority to hold as "enemy combatants" American citizens taken into
custody on our soil. Michael Avery, the President of the National
Lawyers Guild and a constitutional law professor at Suffolk Law School
in Boston, said that several of President Bush's actions in pursuit of
the "War on Terrorism" suggest that the President holds the American
constitutional system of checks and balances in contempt.
"It is essential in our democracy that the Judicial Branch review the
actions of the President and require that he obey the Constitution,"
Avery said. He continued, "The President has arrogated to himself the
right to hold both citizens and immigrants prisoner, without any
judicial determination of probable cause that they have committed
crimes, without affording them the right to see lawyers, without
giving them rudimentary due process of law, and with no prospect of
bringing their cases to trial in proper courts. This is completely
foreign to our constitutional system. The fact that the court rejected
the government's position and ruled in favor of Mr. Padilla's rights
is heartening."
The National Lawyers Guild, founded in 1937, comprises over 6,000
members and activists in the service of the people, to the end that
human rights shall be regarded as more sacred than property interests.
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