Daily Read: Constitutional Rights and the Domestic War on Terror

Jeanne Theoharis (pictured right) a Political Science Professor at Brooklyn College (CUNY) has an interesting article over at The Nation, as the first in a series of pieces in collaboration with Educators for Civil Liberties about the "domestic war on terror."  Theoharis discusses the well-known situation of Syed Fahad Hashmi, one of her former students.

She observes that "researchers and human rights advocates, focused on the horrors abroad in the “war on terror” (Guantánamo, Abu Ghraib, extraordinary rendition), had largely overlooked the civil rights abuses happening right here at home."

She argues

Just because something is legal does not make it just. Many of the most egregious rights violations in American history—slavery, the seizure of Indian land, segregation and the expansion of the penal system, the internment of Japanese-Americans, the firing of gay and communist-sympathizing federal employees during the McCarthy era—were accomplished and legitimated through the law. Most of these historical instances were undertaken as necessary security measures. It took public dissent and a sustained outcry, long and arduous struggles, to reveal the rights abuses embodied in the law.

This would be a great short "think piece" to stimulate conversation in a Constitutional Law class.