Category Archives: Civil Liberties

Military Entanglement With Religion

Posted on March 4, 2013 by Michael Froomkin

The Center for Inquiry has produced a report called For God and Country: Religious Fundamentalism in the U.S. Military. It collects recent stories of breakdowns in the armed forces regarding the church/state wall of separation and makes some seemingly sensible recommendations:

Over the past decade there have been multiple news reports highlighting an intensified tension regarding what constitutes proper religious expression in the United States Armed Forces. However, there has been a scarce amount of thorough research examining the connection between these reports and, going further, proposing possible solutions. As a result, there has been a lack of information with which to stoke social and political will for change.

In this position paper, James Parco provides compelling evidence there has been a disturbing expansion and entrenchment of Christian fundamentalism in the U.S. military, a cultural force which remains at times both tacitly and overtly endorsed by senior military leaders. Parco supports his claim by presenting a number of case studies demonstrating a clear pattern of unconstitutional religiously sectarian behavior. He then analyzes the merits of the competing philosophical perspectives on the proper role of religious expression by men and women in uniform.

Parco concludes the report with recommendations that those in power should implement immediately in order to fully protect the U.S. military’s necessarily secular foundation and the religious freedom of all who volunteer to serve.

I would be shocked — pleased and shocked — if many of these recommendations were actually implemented any time soon. This is a problem that isn’t going away quickly.

(The report’s author, by the way, is a retired Lt. Colonel.)

Posted in Civil Liberties | Comments Off on Military Entanglement With Religion

Innocence Project Handbook for Law Students

Posted on February 22, 2013 by Michael Froomkin

By Sarah MourerCongratulations to colleague Sarah A. Mourer who has just published her first book, Working in Innocence Programs: Everything You Always Wanted To Know About Innocence Work But Were Afraid To Ask.

Here’s part of the synopsis:

This book is written for anyone interested in the innocence cause. The problem of wrongful convictions is moving more and more into the public’s eye every day. This book is specifically written to guide a student or participant through an innocence program step by step. It covers everything from how not to get too worried about the clients to how to conduct a client interview. It really is everything you need to know to participate in an innocence program. It is also a valuable resource for those directing innocence programs or hoping to start one. It provides templates for forms and suggestions for best practices for procedures necessary to run an exemplary innocence program. It is a must for any student enrolled in a law school innocence program. It will help the students hit the ground running and allow programs to get help to the clients more efficiently. No other book on the market is available that encompasses all of the major issues for effective innocence work in one convenient place.

Posted in Civil Liberties, U.Miami | Comments Off on Innocence Project Handbook for Law Students

A Note From the Surveillance Society

Posted on November 27, 2012 by Michael Froomkin

This, spotted at a local fast foodery, is depressing:

Since when is it the rule that if you don’t want to be on camera, you must be up to no good?

And no, I do not find the concept of a “burrito-cam” comforting in any way shape or form.

Posted in Civil Liberties, Law: Privacy | 1 Comment

The Corporation at Prayer (and Other Things)

Posted on November 12, 2012 by Michael Froomkin

Last week Colorado and Montana passed citizen initiatives stating that corporations are not entitled to constitutional rights as people — a response to the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision, but also to a longer history of vesting various rights in corporations.

It was thus something of a surprise to encounter today a reference to a new paper by Ronald J. Colombo, The Naked Private Square, which argues that,

Employment law, corporate law, and constitutional law have worked to impede the ability of business enterprises to adopt, pursue, and maintain distinctively religious personae. This is undesirable because religious freedom does not truly and fully exist if religion expression and practice is restricted to the private quarters of one’s home or temple.

Fortunately, a corrective to this situation exists: recognition of the right to free exercise of religion on the part of business corporations. Such a right has been long in the making, and the jurisprudential trajectory of the courts (especially the U.S. Supreme Court), combined with the increased assertion of this right against certain elements of the current regulatory onslaught, suggests that its recognition is imminent.

I have a lot of sympathy for the impulses that animate the corporations-are-not-a-person movement, but I’m a little uncomfortable with absolutist ideas about how to implement it. For example, simply saying that corporations do not have First or Fourth Amendment rights as an entity should not imply that the people working in them check their rights at the door either.

Similarly, the entity has legitimate needs for some rights-like legal guarantees if only to serve the legitimate interests of its owners and employees. Would due process still apply? I hope so. How about the right to counsel? Again, that seems like a necessity, doesn’t it?

I suspect that just removing all current protections would not work at all well; some sort of statutory code of intermediate protections would be necessary to replace the current framework. There’s a lot of work waiting to be done mapping out how wide swaths of law relating to speech, to search, and no doubt many other things, would and should work if we were to treat the corporation-as-entity as outside the protections of the bill of rights.

(Article spotted via Larry Solum.)

Posted in Civil Liberties, Law: Constitutional Law | 8 Comments

A Second-Term Agenda

Posted on November 11, 2012 by Michael Froomkin

Vincent Warren, Executive Director at the Center for Constitutional Rights, has an agenda for President’s Obama’s second term:

Obama’s re-election means we need to hold the president accountable for the change we want to see. Here are the changes we will keep fighting for in Obama’s second term:

  • Close Guantanamo, and end torture through indefinite detention. Repatriate or resettle the men the government does not intend to prosecute, and provide fair trials for the rest
  • End the use of solitary confinement in prisons across the country
  • End unlawful “targeted killings” and the expansion of the Orwellian “disposition matrix.” Acknowledge, investigate and provide reparations for unlawful civilian killings
  • End the war in Afghanistan and pull all private military contractors out of Iraq and Afghanistan
  • Abandon the endless global war paradigm as the basis for abusive national security policies and end the use of war force outside of war zones
  • Investigate and prosecute former high-level U.S. officials who bear responsibility for torture and war crimes committed in Afghanistan, Iraq and the “black sites”
  • Provide medical treatment and compensation to people subjected to torture in U.S.-run detention facilities, including in Iraq and Afghanistan as well as Guantánamo, and provide war reparations to communities in Iraq and Afghanistan for harms done to the people and the environment
  • End the persecution of whistleblowers and journalists like Julian Assange, Wikileaks and Bradley Manning for protected First Amendment activity
  • Increase transparency, sunshine and freedom of information in federal law enforcement and prisons and end overclassification of unlawful or embarrassing government conduct
  • Stop the criminalization of dissent: end the stifling of activist expression under the anti-free-speech National Defense Authorization Act and the Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act and end overbroad prosecutions for terrorism under material support laws
  • Stop the criminalization and profiling of communities based on race and religion: end the devastating Secure Communities program that destroys families and spreads fear in immigrant neighborhoods
  • End warrantless surveillance and stop the indiscriminate targeting and surveillance of Muslim, Middle Eastern, and South Asian communities under the guise of national security
  • Support human rights internationally: stop funding and training police and militaries abroad implicated in human rights abuses in places like Honduras
  • Center women’s equality in all policy and legislative initiatives concerning their bodily autonomy and right to health

Off the top of my head, I don’t think Obama is for any of these, is he?

I myself am not on board for some items on this list either. For example, I think it is entirely legal to prosecute Bradley Manning, as I don’t think he was engaged in a protected First Amendment activity; whether one believes he did a public service relates to moral culpability and hero/villain status, but not legal guilt. I don’t feel well informed about the Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act, but it certainly hasn’t reached my radar as s civil liberties issue. There’s probably more. Even so, I respect the ambition and energy that motivates this list; what I’m wondering is which if any of these items will be able to get traction?

Posted in Civil Liberties, Torture | Comments Off on A Second-Term Agenda

The Fourth Amendment at Sea

Posted on October 26, 2012 by Michael Froomkin

Via PogoWasRight a link to Coast Guard Boardings and Your Fourth Amendment Rights, Part 1. According to the author, the 4th Amendment has no traction at sea: the Coast Guard can board US flag ships at will, whether on the seas, on rivers, or in port, without the least suspicion.

Sorry, but when it comes to Coast Guard boardings, you don’t have any rights.

I’m surprised how many boaters don’t know this. The US Coast Guard can board your boat any time they want, and look anywhere they want, without probable cause or a warrant. They can do this on the open sea, or while you’re asleep aboard in your marina at midnight. They can look through your bedsheets, in your lockers, in your bilges, in your jewelry box, or in your pockets. They can do it carrying just their sidearms, or they can do it carrying assault rifles. They can be polite about it or they can be rude, but mostly they’re polite.

The article does not say, but I presume this even applies to houseboats?

Posted in Civil Liberties, Law: Constitutional Law | 1 Comment