Less Safe, Less Free: "Prevention," the "War on Terror" and the Attack on the Rule of Law

Date 

Add to My Calendar Tuesday, November 6, 2007 12:00am

Location 

The Center for Constitutional Rights presents…

LESS SAFE, LESS FREE

“Prevention,” the “War on Terror,” and the Attack on the Rule of Law


 
with authors DAVID COLE and JULES LOBEL

Joined on the panel by CCR Executive Director Vincent Warren and CCR President Michael Ratner

Conversation Moderated by Karen Greenberg, NYU Center on Law and Security



Tuesday, November 6, 2007
7:00 PM
The Riverside Church
91 Claremont (between 120 & 122 Street)
New York, NY

Free and Open to the Public!


 Join authors and CCR Board Members David Cole and Jules Lobel as they discuss their new book, LESS SAFE, LESS FREE. At home and abroad, the administration has cut corners on fundamental commitments of the rule of law in the name of preventing future attacks—from “waterboarding” detainees, to disappearing suspects into secret CIA prisons, to attacking Iraq against the wishes of the UN Security Council and most of the world when it posed no imminent threat of attacking us.

In their brilliantly conceived critique, two of the country’s preeminent constitutional scholars argue that the great irony is that these sacrifices in the rule of law, adopted in the name of prevention, have in fact made us more susceptible to future terrorist attacks. They conclusively debunk the administration’s claim that it is winning the war on terror and offer an alternative strategy in which the rule of law is an asset, not an obstacle, in the struggle to keep us both safe and free. This event comes only a few days before oral argument in Arar v. Ashcroft, CCR’s case on behalf of Maher Arar, a victim of extraordinary rendition to torture whose case is a pre-eminent example of the human consequences of the so-called “preventive paradigm.”

David Cole is a professor of law at Georgetown University, the legal affairs correspondent for The Nation, and the author, most recently, of the American Book Award–winning Enemy Aliens. He lives in Washington, D.C. Jules Lobel is a professor of law at the University of Pittsburgh and a constitutional lawyer and expert on emergency powers and the laws governing war. He lives in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

Directions by Subway
Take the #1 IRT Broadway Local to 116th Street. Walk north along Broadway (passing Barnard College on the left) to 120th Street (Reinhold Niebuhr Place). Turn left and walk one block to (Claremont Avenue). 91 Claremont is one half block north of 120th Street on the left hand side of the street. If the IRT Broadway Express (#2 or #3 IRT) is taken uptown from midtown Manhattan, be sure to change at 96th street for the local train.

 

For more information, please contact Lynne Kates at [email protected] or 212-614-6443.

Last modified 

November 5, 2007