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Constitutional rights champion warns patriot acts danger { October 1 2003 } Original Source Link: (May no longer be active)
http://www.suntimes.com/output/neal/cst-edt-neal01.htmlhttp://www.suntimes.com/output/neal/cst-edt-neal01.html
Champion of constitutional rights warns of Patriot Act's danger
October 1, 2003
BY STEVE NEAL SUN-TIMES COLUMNIST
Abner J. Mikva, former chief judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Washington, D.C., circuit, warns that our constitutional rights are at risk in the Bush administration's war on terrorism.
''We dare not let the evil dreams of the terrorists be achieved by ourselves destroying the freedom that they despise,'' he said.
''I can tell you that even though suing bin Laden is not the most likely way to bring him to justice, the rule of law and how to implement it remains the critical order of the day," Mikva told the 34th annual meeting of the Chicago Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights. "If we lose our enthusiasm for that quest, terrorism will have destroyed more than the World Trade Center; it will have destroyed our special status, our raison de etre."
Mikva, a visiting professor at the University of Chicago Law School, said that the Bush administration has pushed through laws that undermine the Bill of Rights and violate the principle of due process and equal justice under the law.
He described the Patriot Act and other actions, initiated by the Bush administration in the fall of 2001 and passed by Congress with little debate, as "more serious threats to our liberty" than the terrorist attacks.
"When America has accepted the view that order, instead of freedom, is paramount, we have learned -- the hard way -- that we lose both liberty and order," he said. "From revolutionary times, this has been true: Just look what happened to the Japanese during World War II and what is happening today at Guantanamo Bay."
Mikva is appalled that more than 1,000 individuals, including undocumented immigrants and suspected terrorists, have been held at the high-security Cuban base without being charged with a crime or allowed to have counsel.
"We are in very, very dangerous waters," he said. "We have to be concerned about how we will respond to the terrorism threats that threaten our very way of life. We have to worry that the fragile balance between security and liberty will be sharply changed.
"It is not the long lines at the airport that should concern us," he added, "but the notion that persons can be held for protracted periods without charges, that profiling can become a standard and accepted police technique, that privacy becomes a non-value."
In his 16 years on the federal appeals court, Mikva wrote more than 300 opinions and fought hard to uphold constitutional rights. His judicial career was in the tradition of the late Supreme Court Justices William J. Brennan and William O. Douglas. Mikva wrote opinions that protected free speech, upheld the rights of consumers, and the constitutional right of privacy. He did the right thing in striking down the Defense Department's ban on gays in the military, which was later reversed, but he ultimately prevailed when President Bill Clinton lifted this unconstitutional ban.
"It used to pain me to be called a judicial activist," Mikva said. "It pained me even more to realize that the real activism was being practiced by those who did the calling. What else can you call judges who say that Congress, the first branch of government, doesn't have the power to prohibit age discrimination by state employers, who say that Congress can't provide relief for women who are assaulted by fellow students at a state school, or that Congress can't prohibit states from violating the Americans with Disabilities Act? What else do you call judges who say that Congress can't ban guns in school zones?"
Mikva, who became politically active in 1948 as a law student at the University of Chicago, said that conservatives have been more effective than progressives in advancing their agenda and developing "a very effective farm system" through the right-wing Federalist Society.
"What is missing," he said, "is the counterforce to make our democracy work as it should. Those of us who believe that the history of this country -- indeed of civilization -- has been the promotion of liberal ideas and progressive programs have no doubt about which side will win."
Mikva said that the public is looking "for a force that can counter the very unnatural conservative forces that appear to dominate law schools and legal thought. I say appear, because I don't think law schools or the bar have really changed that much. I have campaigned with law students, hired law students, taught them, raised some -- I even was one once. I have been a lawyer for over 50 years.
"Law students still come to law school for all the right reasons -- at least most of them. They have a commitment to work for social justice and to represent people in need. Their role model is still more likely to be Clarence Darrow than Clarence Thomas. And it is true that many of their teachers hold similar views. And it remains true that most law students don't lose that idealism when they hit the streets."
Mikva is asking them to "take this challenge and make sure that these threats to our basic fundamental liberties don't go unchecked."
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