The Legacy of Radical Lawyer Michael Ratner

June 2, 2021
The Nation

...Michael Ratner did everything “one hundred percent on principle.” And much of it seemed, at least at the time, hopeless. He filed more impossible-to-win lawsuits than perhaps any other major lawyer of the past 50 years. With the Center for Constitutional Rights, where he worked for over four decades, he went to court to challenge the invasion of Grenada, the funding of the contras in Nicaragua, the interdiction of Haitian refugees, the ban on traveling to Cuba, and the invasion of Iraq. Not many of these lawsuits succeeded. They were filed “on principle.” Ratner’s principle was to challenge the abuse of power wherever he saw it. ...

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June 2, 2021