May
11, 2016, New York – The Center for Constitutional Rights is sad to release the
following statement on the occasion of the passing of the Center’s president
emeritus Michael Ratner:
From
Attica to Assange, Michael Ratner has defended, investigated, and spoken up for
victims of human rights abuses all over the world. For 45 years, Michael
brought cases with the Center for Constitutional Rights in U.S. courts related
to war, torture, and other atrocities, sometimes committed by the U.S.,
sometimes by other regimes or corporations, in places ranging from El Salvador,
Grenada, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Cuba, Haiti, Puerto Rico, and Guatemala, to
Yugoslavia, Indonesia, the Philippines, Iraq, and Israel. Seeking to hold Bush
administration officials accountable for torture, he turned to filing cases
under the principle of Universal Jurisdiction in international courts—in
Germany, Spain, Canada, Switzerland, and France. Michael dedicated his life to
the most important fights for justice of the last half century.
When
Michael decided to take on U.S. policies of indefinite detention at Guantanamo
in January 2002, it was not a popular position. With Michael, the Center for
Constitutional Rights was the first human rights organization to stand up for
the rights of Guantanamo detainees, and Michael was a founding member of the
Guantanamo Bay Bar Association, a group that grew to over 500 attorneys from
all over the country working pro bono to provide representation to the men at
Guantanamo that has been called the largest mass defense effort in U.S.
history. Michael acted as counsel in the landmark case Rasul v. Bush, and
after two and a half years of litigation, CCR and co-counsel won the first
Guantanamo case in the United States Supreme Court.
As
an attorney, writer, speaker, educator, activist, and as the President of the
Center for Constitutional Rights for so many years, Michael Ratner’s passion
was not just for the law but for the struggle for justice and peace. Michael’s
work on Central America, Haiti, surveillance, WikiLeaks and Julian Assange,
whistleblowers, war powers, and Palestine will not soon be matched.
Michael’s
leadership and generous spirit have shown the way for new generations of social
justice lawyers. He helped found the European Center for Constitutional
and Human Rights, bringing CCR’s style of lawyering, which he helped shape, to
Europe, where the legal culture was less familiar with public interest
lawyering and filing suits to press for social change. He worked with CCR and
the Bertha Justice Institute on programs to educate junior lawyers, working in
partnership with front-line organizations around the world and fostering
artistic partnerships that bring the issues he championed his entire life to a
wider audience. Michael’s legacy is the sea of people he has touched—his
family, his clients, his allies, his colleagues, and all of the young lawyers
he has inspired. Today we mourn. Tomorrow we carry on his work.
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My friend, the Talking Dog interviewed Michael many years ago: read that interview here........
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My friend, the Talking Dog interviewed Michael many years ago: read that interview here........
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