Historic Cases

Since 1966, CCR has pioneered daring and innovative legal strategies in pursuit of its mission to advance and protect the rights guaranteed by the United States Constitution and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Our work began on behalf of civil rights activists, and since then CCR has lent its expertise and support to virtually every popular progressive movement.

Many of the Center’s historic victories have established major legal precedents – from Filártiga v. Peña-Irala, which opened U.S. courts for victims of serious human rights violations from anywhere in the world to Rasul v. Bush, which established the right of Guantánamo detainees to challenge their detention.

Ba Odah v. Obama

Habeas corpus petition on behalf of Tariq Ba Odah, a cleared Yemeni man who was detained at Guantánamo without charge from 2002 - 2016.
Updated: March 2, 2017

Doe v. Karadzic

In 1993, CCR and co-counsel sued Radovan Karadžić for genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity – including the campaign of rape and other sexual violence as a form of torture and genocide...
Updated: September 19, 2016

Salaita v. Kennedy, et al.

A lawsuit against the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign for firing Professor Steven Salaita from a tenured position over his tweets critical of Israel’s summer 2014 attack on Gaza.
Updated: September 15, 2016

Zahir Hamdoun: Periodic Review (PRB) Proceedings

Zahir Hamdoun’s Periodic Review Board (PRB) proceedings are part of an administrative process the Obama administration established to review the cases of those Guantánamo detainees it has neither...
Updated: September 15, 2016

U.S. v. SHAC 7

The federal prosecution, on "animal enterprise terrorism" charges, of 6 animal rights activists and their non-profit organization, for publishing a website that advocated and reported on protest...
Updated: August 3, 2016

State of New York v. Danny White, et al.

State of New York v. Danny White is a lawsuit challenging New York State’s attempts to evict Mohawk Native Americans from land that had been recognized as theirs in the Treaty of 1784. It also...
Updated: February 11, 2016

Ghazy v. Bush

One enduring and pernicious myth about the men detained at Guantánamo is that they were all sent to the prison after being captured on the battlefield by U.S. forces in order to neutralize the threat...
Updated: January 14, 2016

Othman v. Obama

A petition for habeas corpus filed on behalf of Khaled Abd el Ghabar Mohammed Othman by his family members in Yemen as “next friends” (the traditional mode of challenging detention by the executive...
Updated: November 25, 2015

Filártiga v. Peña-Irala

Charging former Paraguayan official Americo Peña-Irala with the wrongful death of Joelito Filártiga. The suit pioneered the application of a previously little-used 1789 federal statute, the Alien...
Updated: November 10, 2015

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