First Monday: ACLU's Rosenbaum urges law students to consider a changing Constitution

The aggressive anti-terrorism tactics of the Bush administration are threatening the civil liberties of American citizens and immigrants living in the United States, said Mark Rosenbaum of the ACLU of Southern California, speaking last Monday at the invitation of the Law School's Public Interest Law Foundation.

Rosenbaum's talk was part of a national day of education called "First Monday 2002: Civil Liberties in a New America." Taking place on the first official day of the U.S. Supreme Court's new term, the events at law schools across the country were meant to call attention to what many students see as an erosion of civil liberties in the name of national security.

Rosenbaum, legal director for the ACLU's Southern California office, cited the hundreds of immigrants who have been detained by the FBI and denied public hearings. He criticized the effort to fire all airport screeners who are not U.S. citizens , even though pilots and flight attendants can be non-citizens. He deplored the fate of the Guantanamo Bay detainees who have access to neither the American justice system nor military tribunals. And he questioned how the government could label some American citizens as "enemy combatants" and hold them indefinitely without filing charges.

He said two themes have emerged from these national security activities: secrecy and the attempts to prevent judicial review.

All of this raises profound questions about how the Constitution is being used today and how it has been changed by historic moments such as Sept. 11, he said.

"What does the Constitution mean and are you satisfied with what it means?" Rosenbaum asked the audience of mostly law students. "The challenge for students and young lawyers is to think about the ways that the Constitution can change. It's not an abstract notion for people who are being detained as enemy combatants. That's their lives."