The "pro-Constitution=pro-terrorist" canard

Glenn Greenwald
Nov. 15, 2010

Hauling out a decades-old zombie canard that will probably never die -- namely, that a lawyer who advocates for the Constitutional rights of a Bad Person is acting improperly or even subversively -- Andrew Sullivan, in a post entitled "Defending an Active Terrorist," writes:

The decision of the ACLU and CCR (the Center for Constitutional Rights) to represent Anwar al-Awlaki, even as he continues to emit clear death threats to writers and cartoonists, seems to me to cross a line.

I'd really love to know: which "line" would this be? Even Bush-43-appointed federal judge John Bates -- who presided over the 3-hour hearing on the request by the ACLU and CCR for an injunction against Awlaki's assassination -- repeatedly acknowledged that the American-citizen-targeted assassination power Obama is asserting is extraordinary, and the DOJ's unrestrained executive power theory invoked to justify it is unprecedented. Does Andrew really believe that it's the duty of every Good, Patriotic American lawyer to refuse to participate in a judicial adjudication of these critical Constitutional questions? It's preferable to simply cede this power to the Government without any judicial review or ruling as to its propriety or Constitutionality -- just allow the Government the power to compile hit lists of American citizens far from any battlefield without even having to defend the Constitutionality of those actions in court? What conception of patriotism calls for that? Which "line" compels abstention from such proceedings?

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