I attended a meeting of a committee of the American Bar Association today.<\/p>\n
There was a panel on civil liberties after September 11<\/b>. Civil<\/p>\n
liberties are not a core interest of mine, although listening to professional<\/p>\n
advocates and litigators always scares me, since their job is to tell<\/p>\n
us about the egregious cases that do arise. The experts on the panel today<\/p>\n
pointed out four worrying trends that I hadn’t fully understood before:<\/p>\n
to hold witnesses who might be expected to disappear, until such a time<\/p>\n
as they could be deposed. Since 9\/11, it is being used to hold people<\/p>\n
indefinitely without any claim that they witnessed any specific crime,<\/p>\n
and without notice that they will be deposed or otherwise interviewed.<\/li>\n
person being searched. This is a safeguard, since the person can complain<\/p>\n
if his rights are violated, if the police are in the wrong house, etc.<\/p>\n
But under the Patriot Act, federal agents can execute "sneak and<\/p>\n
peek" warrants that are clandestine searches never disclosed to<\/p>\n
the person whose property is searched. This power applies to all cases,<\/p>\n
not just those connected to terrorism.<\/li>\n
would have enlisted huge numbers of volunteers, including cable-TV installers<\/p>\n
and others who routinely enter our homes, as a source of tips on possible<\/p>\n
terrorists. This program would have promoted volunteerism; but it would<\/p>\n
also have undermined the fourth amendment.<\/li>\n
will require judges to notify the Attorney General whenever they use<\/p>\n
discretion to impose sentences lower than the minimum recommended in<\/p>\n
federal sentencing guidelines. The three federal judges who were in<\/p>\n
attendance today are certain that this will have the proverbial "chilling<\/p>\n
effect," since judges will be afraid of public exposure and censure<\/p>\n
by John Ashcroft. I would hope that federal judges would have backbones.<\/p>\n
We give them life tenure as well as nice salaries and high social status,<\/p>\n
so they should be willing to stand up to criticism from the political<\/p>\n
branches of government. However, hope is not a good basis for legislation.<\/p>\n
The judges in attendance predicted that their colleagues will fear criticism.<\/p>\n
They are probably right, which means that the legislation is a blow<\/p>\n
to judicial independence. <\/li>\n<\/ol>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I attended a meeting of a committee of the American Bar Association today. There was a panel on civil liberties after September 11. Civil liberties are not a core interest of mine, although listening to professional advocates and litigators always scares me, since their job is to tell us about the egregious cases that do […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4178","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-revitalizing-the-left"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4178","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4178"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4178\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4178"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4178"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4178"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}