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NEWS & LETTERS, August-September 2004Supreme Court slows destruction of some civil libertiesGeorge W. Bush’s attempts to replace the U.S. Constitution with his own dictatorship were partially set back by three Supreme Court decisions in June. The same Court that upheld Bush’s theft of the 2000 election, finally drew the line on executive power during the "war on terror" by invalidating his policy of unreviewable, unlimited imprisonment of Americans as well as foreigners. Declaring that "a state of war is not a blank check for the president," the Court held that people who are detained in the U.S. and declared "enemy combatants" in an attempt to evade their Constitutional rights, must be permitted to consult with lawyers, to have the courts review their confinements, and to be charged and tried. Even foreigners taken prisoner in Afghanistan (and by extension, in Iraq), are entitled to some kind of review of their continued detentions in Guantanamo prison and elsewhere, the Court said. These decisions are no great surprise--the Court was not going to eliminate its own power by voting away the right to judicial review, and was unlikely to eliminate habeas corpus, the constitutional right of those arrested to be brought before a judge. But so conservative has the dominant attitude become, that Bush got away with these unlimited detentions without charge for nearly three years, and it will take many more years for all the people he jailed since September 11 actually to be tried. MORE POWER TO EXECUTIVE BRANCH Meanwhile, Bush shows every intention of arrogating more and more power to the executive branch in order to promote both his foreign and domestic agendas. He and his chief henchman, Attorney General John Ashcroft, are at this moment trying a criminal lawyer, Lynne Stewart, for allegedly conveying a political message out of the jailhouse for her client, a convicted Islamic terrorist (additional charges against her were thrown out by the court). Prosecuting lawyers is meant to intimidate them so they will not take unpopular cases, and is common in countries with weak criminal defense systems. Other recent modes of intimidation include Justice Department subpoenas of anti-war protesters and of records of abortion clinics and of Drake University’s National Lawyers Guild chapter. Also at this moment, the Republicans are attempting to get a law through Congress that would compensate for their failure to obtain a constitutional amendment outlawing same-sex marriage. The "Marriage Protection Act" would limit marriage rights and discriminate against GLBT families by prohibiting any judicial review of the Defense of Marriage Act. Also before Congress is the "Son of PATRIOT Act," which will further decimate everyone’s civil liberties, already horribly eroded by the post-September 11 PATRIOT Acts. The new law would permit even more wiretapping of phones, e-mail and internet; allow warrantless searches of homes and computers, and compel libraries and businesses to turn over information about you to the FBI without any notification to you allowed. And Congress is inclined to pass anything labeled "anti-terrorist," no matter how irrelevant it is to real security interests. APPOINTMENT OF RIGHT-WING JUDGES The greatest long-term danger to civil liberties comes from Bush’s appointment of extreme right-wing judges to the federal bench, where they serve for life. He has begun to appoint some during Congressional recesses because Congress refused to approve the most outspoken racists and misogynists. And the Supreme Court will lose its last vestiges of concern for civil rights, including the right to abortion, if just one justice dies or retires while Bush is in office to appoint his or her replacement. Remember when you were taught in school that U.S. democracy rests on the separation of powers, the "checks and balances" of three branches of government? You would never know it from these and other recent events. In addition to declaring that national security allows it to jail anyone and throw away the key, the Bush Administration is actively intervening in civil cases on behalf of itself and the capitalist system it serves. In one case, Achehnese villagers sued Exxon-Mobil for complicity with the Indonesian military in human rights violations, and the judge asked the State Department whether the right to sue a U.S. corporation in the U.S. should be set aside due to foreign policy considerations. Recently, Ashcroft started to intervene in lawsuits by injured consumers against the makers of drugs and medical devices; the government claims there is no right to sue for damages if the products have been approved by the Food and Drug Administration. If successful, this would be an enormous change in the law. Bush’s disregard for traditional law is like his embrace of phony science and medicine. We now have junk law on a par with junk science. For example, the administration ordered up a legal memorandum to support its view that torture of military detainees is legal, and then cited the memo to justify Abu Ghraib and the abandonment of the Geneva Conventions against torture. Bush argues that existing treaties on torture, environmental protection, etc., can be broken at any time--in other words, there is no more international law, only U.S. rule of the world. Bush’s legal assaults against civil liberties, as well as against women’s and GLBT rights, arise only partly to prove his credentials to his Christian-Right base. Nor do they arise largely from any real needs in fighting terrorism, since police agencies already have the tools to investigate and arrest anyone they have a reason to believe is a threat. The main reason for the assaults on civil liberties and legal rights is to intimidate people from joining the anti-war and other opposition movements, and to tape our mouths closed to prevent the spread of ideas that could encourage mass movements against the capitalist order. This reason can be seen everywhere, from Georgia’s "state of emergency" and mass arrests of demonstrators during the G-8 meeting in June, to Boston and New York’s attempts to hobble protests at the political party conventions this summer, to Charleston, W. Va.’s recent arrest of two people for wearing t-shirts that said "Love America, Hate Bush." New York may be shut-down or see a bloodbath during the coming Republican Convention. Hundreds of anti-Bush events are planned, from street-theater to camp-ins to marches. For months, we fought the city for permission to hold the major rally, Aug. 29, in Central Park or Times Square, but in July, the group United for Peace and Justice gave up the fight and agreed to a rally on a highway, so now the speakers will be three miles from the Convention site. I would not be surprised if even that is cancelled on the pretext of security. Since it will be impossible to keep small demonstrations from appearing everywhere the delegates go, I expect much of Manhattan and the subway to be shut down. CONTINUED THREATS TO CIVIL LIBERTIES The Bush agenda has been slowed by some courts for now, but we cannot "rest assured" that traditional civil liberties will survive continued assaults. Marxist-Humanists have no reason to believe that our rights to hold public meetings, publish radical ideas, or even to remain out of jail, will last long if "anti-terrorism" measures continue under Bush or any capitalist successor who seizes the opportunity to foreclose the possibility of mass revolutionary discussion and action. --Anne Jaclard |
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