Accountability: No One’s Above the Law- A conversation with CCR Executive Director Vincent Warren

Date 

Add to My Calendar Monday, April 20, 2009 12:00am

Location 

 

Vincent Warren

Accountability: No One’s Above the Law

A Review of Obama’s First 100 Days

Vince Warren, Executive Director, Center for Constitutional Rights

University of Pittsburgh Law School, Moot Court Room

Monday, April 20, 2009 at 7:30 p.m.

The Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) Executive Director Vince Warren will be speaking at the University of Pittsburgh Law School’s Moot Courtroom on Monday, April 20 at 7:30 p.m. He will discuss CCR’s work seeking to hold the Bush Administration accountable for the illegal actions they carried out during the last eight years, including torture, rendition, and illegal detention; criminalization of speech and political activity; and warrantless wiretapping. The CCR advocates prosecutions of former Bush Administration officials, and seeks to ensure transparency from the Obama Administration. Vince will set forth the CCR’s 100 days campaign which calls for ending torture, rendition, and illegal detention, protecting dissent, abolishing preventive detention, limiting state secrets privilege, reining in presidential war powers, stopping warrantless wiretapping, and rolling back executive power. He will lay out the path towards restoration of the Constitution, and assess Obama’s progress on these key issues.

The Center, which took the lead in representing the Guantanamo detainees in Court is now fighting to ensure that the Obama Administration does not simply close Guantanamo and continue to hold detainees under some other form of preventive detention. The detainees should either be criminally tried or released to countries where they will not be tortured.

The CCR is a national legal and educational organization dedicated to advancing and defending the rights guaranteed by the United States Constitution and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. As Executive Director, Vince oversees CCR’s groundbreaking litigation and advocacy work. Vince has spearheaded a public campaign, "Beyond Guantanamo: Rescue the Constitution" coinciding with CCR’s landmark Supreme Court victory in Al Odah v. U.S. and Boumediene v. Bush, which held that the detainees at Guantánamo Bay have a constitutional right to the writ of habeas corpus. Prior to his tenure at CCR, Vince held the position of national senior staff attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), where he led constitutional and impact litigation to advance civil rights and liberties.

 

 

Last modified 

March 26, 2009