Center for Constitutional Rights

Center for Constitutional Rights

Founded	July 1966 by Arthur Kinoy, William Kunstler, Ben Smith and Morton Stavis
Type	Non-profit
Location	New York City, New York, U.S.
Services	Advocacy, litigation, public education
Key people	Michael Ratner, President Emeritus; Jules Lobel, President; Alex Rosenberg and Peter Weiss, Vice-Presidents; Vincent Warren, Executive Director; Baher Azmy, Legal Director; William P. Quigley, Associate Legal Director
Website	CCRJustice.org

The Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) is a progressive non-profit legal advocacy organization based in New York City, New York, in the United States. It was founded in 1966 by Arthur Kinoy, William Kunstler and others particularly to support activists in the implementation of civil rights legislation and to achieve social justice.

CCR has focused on civil liberties and human rights litigation, and activism. Since winning the landmark case in the United States Supreme Court of Rasul v. Bush (2004), establishing the right of detainees at Guantanamo Bay detainment camp to challenge their status in US courts and gain legal representation, it has provided legal assistance to people imprisoned there and gained release for many who were unlawfully held or proven not to be a risk to security.

History

Jules Lobel, current President of the Center for Constitutional Rights, testifying before Congressional subcommittee about the War Powers Act.

The center, originally the Law Center for Constitutional Rights, was set up to give legal and financial support to lawyers who were representing Civil Rights Movement activists in Mississippi at the height of the struggle against racial segregation and economic injustice. Its founders were Morton Stavis, Arthur Kinoy, Ben Smith and William Kunstler. The Center identified as a "movement support" organization; that is, an organization that concentrated on working with political and social activists to use the courts to promote the activists' work. Cases were chosen to raise public awareness of an issue, generate media attention, and/or energize activists being harassed by local law enforcement in the South. In this regard, the Center differed from more traditional legal non-profits, such as the ACLU, which was more focused on bringing winnable cases in order to extend precedents and develop the law, as well as pursuing First Amendment issues.

The current organization was formed from the merger of the original Center for Constitutional Rights (formed in 1966 by Kunstler, Kinoy, Stavis and Smith) and the Emergency Civil Liberties Committee (ECLC).

Since 9/11, it has been known for bringing a variety of cases challenging the Bush administration's detention, extraordinary rendition, and interrogation practices in the so-called "Global War on Terror". When its president Michael Ratner filed Rasul v. Bush in 2002, this was the first lawsuit to challenge President George W. Bush's wartime detentions at Guantanamo Bay Naval Base in Cuba in the early days of the "war on terror."

It was the first time in history that the Court had ruled against the president on behalf of alleged enemy fighters in wartime. And it was the first of four Supreme Court decisions between 2004 and 2008 that rejected President Bush's assertion of unchecked executive power in the "war on terror."

Issues on which it conducted advocacy in the 2000s included: illegal detentions, particularly with regard to the Guantanamo Bay detainment camp; surveillance and attacks on dissent, in relation to the U.S. government's involvement in unlawful surveillance, monitoring and intimidation of activists such as the Black Panthers; criminal justice and mass incarceration, including jail expansions and unjust detentions; corporate and human rights abuse both domestic and international; government abuse of power, primarily encompassing CCR's challenge to the Bush administration's policy of extraordinary rendition; racial, gender and economic justice; and international law and accountability. In 2005, the organization was recognized with the Domestic Human Rights Award by Global Exchange, in San Francisco.

Notable cases

• Dombrowski v. Pfister, 380 US 479 (1965): The CCR's first major case was a successful suit against the Louisiana Un-American Activities Committee to challenge the use of state anti-subversion laws to intimidate civil rights workers. CCR won the case in the Supreme Court, which ruled that such intimidation had a "chilling effect" on First Amendment rights and was therefore unconstitutional.
• Chicago Seven, (1969): CCR attorneys William Kunstler and Leonard Weinglass defended the "Chicago 8," a group of social movement figures arrested following the 1968 Democratic National Convention demonstrations and consequent police repression. The eight defendants: including David Dellinger, Rennie Davis, Tom Hayden, Abbie Hoffman, Jerry Rubin, and Bobby Seale, were anti-war, civil rights and human rights activists, and Students for a Democratic Society and Black Panther Party members. The eight were found not guilty of their conspiracy charges, but five were found guilty of crossing state lines to incite a riot. The Center appealed and ultimately overturned these charges, based on the judge's bias and the refusal of the court to screen jurors for possible cultural and/or racial bias.
• Abramowicz v. Lefkowitz, (1972): Abramowicz challenged New York state laws that restricted abortion, and served as a model for challenges to similar laws in other states. This case marks the first instance of challenge to abortion statutes being argued by women plaintiffs in terms of women's right to choice rather than a doctor's right to practice.
• Monell v. Department of Social Services, 357 F.Supp. 1051 (1972): This case began as a challenge to New York City's forced maternity leave policies. Its resolution created a precedent that established local government accountability for unconstitutional acts and created the right to obtain damages from municipalities in such cases. Since 1978, this precedent has been used by lawyers and non-profits as a tool to challenge police misconduct, civil rights violations, and other local unconstitutional acts.
• State of Washington v. Wanrow (1972): A women's self-defense murder case, CCR became counsel when the appeal process reached the Washington Supreme Court. The appellate court reversal of the original conviction was upheld. The landmark Supreme Court decision had far-reaching effects on women's self-defense and the law.
• United States v. Banks and Means (Wounded Knee), (1974)
• Filártiga v. Peña-Irala, 630 F. 2d 876 (1980): Filártiga established a precedent for the use of the Alien Tort Statute to allow foreign victims of human rights abuses to seek justice in U.S. courts. CCR represented the family of Joelito Filártiga, the son of a left-wing Paraguayan dissident who had been tortured and killed by Paraguayan police. The precedent created by this case has facilitated subsequent international human rights cases, including Doe v. Karadzic and Doe v. Unocal. These cases have established that multinational corporations and other non-state actors can be held responsible for their complicity in human rights violations.
• Crumsey v. Justice Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, (1982):
• Paul v. Avril, (1994): In 1991, on behalf of six Haitian political activists, including Evans Paul, Mayor of Port-au-Prince, and under the Alien Tort Statute, the CCR sued former military dictator Prosper Avril for human rights violations. The suit sought compensation for damages that the plaintiffs suffered under Avril's rule. In November 1993, CCR attorneys moved for a default judgment. In July 1994, in an unprecedented decision in which a Haitian dictator or member of the military was held accountable for human rights abuses, a federal magistrate awarded a $41 million damage judgment to the victims of Prosper Avril.
• Doe v. Karadzic, (2000): In 1993, the Center for Constitutional Rights and co-counsel filed a lawsuit seeking compensation for victims and survivors of Serb leader Radovan Karadzic's campaign of genocide and torture in Bosnia. Karadzic defaulted in 1997. On September 25, 2000, the jury decided on a verdict of $4.5 billion.
• Rasul v. Bush, 215 F. Supp. 2d 55 (2004): CCR represented Guantanamo detainees seeking fair trials and an end to their indefinite imprisonment without charge. The Supreme Court case established precedent for U.S. courts' jurisdiction over the Guantanamo Bay prison camp, affirming detainees' right to habeas corpus review, including legal representation. This right was later putatively revoked when President Bush signed the Military Commissions Act into law. CCR brought many of the same habeas corpus petitioners to the Supreme Court again in Boumediene v. Bush (2008), in which the Supreme Court declared the relevant parts of the MCA unconstitutional and restored the rights won in Rasul.
• Floyd, et al. v. City of New York, et al. (2013) CCR filed a federal class action lawsuit against the New York City Police Department (NYPD) and the City of New York that challenges the NYPD's practices of racial profiling and "stop-and frisk." These NYPD practices had led to a dramatic increase in the number of suspicion-less stop-and-frisks per year in the city, with the majority of stops in communities of color. On August 12, 2013, a federal judge in a historic ruling found the New York City Police Department (NYPD) liable for a pattern and practice of racial profiling and unconstitutional stop-and-frisks. On January 30, 2014, the City agreed to drop its appeal of the ruling and begin the joint remedial process ordered by the court.

See also

• European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights
• Gitanjali S. Gutierrez
• Hamdi v. Rumsfeld
• International Federation of Human Rights
• Stolen Lives Project

External links

• Official website
• Civil Rights Greensboro
• Center for Constitutional Rights Collected Records from Swarthmore College Peace Collection
• Center for Constitutional Rights Records at Tamiment Library and Robert F. Wagner Archives