[Editor’s Note: Donald Trump isn’t the only government official accused of inciting violence against his own countryfolk. Sian Lewis-Anthony is a human rights lawyer and senior lecturer at Kent Law School in England. She was one of many lawyers who reacted furiously to this tweet from the Home Office a couple of months ago:
Small boat crossings are totally unnecessary and we continue to return migrants with no right to be in the UK. Another flight left today with more planned in the coming weeks. We are working to remove migrants with no right to remain in the UK. But current return regulations are rigid and open to abuse, allowing activist lawyers to delay and disrupt returns. Soon we will no longer be bound by EU laws and can negotiate our own return arrangements.
Home Secretary Priti Patel doubled down in a speech this month by equating lawyers who defend the rights of migrants and asylum-seekers to human traffickers:
No doubt those who are well-rehearsed in how to play and profit from the broken system will lecture us on their grand theories about human rights. Those defending the broken system – the traffickers, the do-gooders, the lefty lawyers, the Labour party – they are defending the indefensible.
Now the lawyers are looking at defending themselves and their clients from further verbal attacks that can magnetize hatred against them. One immigration lawyer has already been the target of a thwarted knife attack.
The following was Lewis-Anthony’s own furious reaction to the original Home Office tweet.]
The Home Office has sunk to new levels of disingenuousness in a tweet today, by depicting lawyers as somehow subverting the state’s efforts in deporting alleged irregular migrants. It is engaged in an ugly war of words that pits an always law-abiding state against an enemy invasion, not of armed warriors, but defenceless, desperate humans, whose sole aim is to find somewhere safe to live and bring up their families. Let us be clear – if bombs were falling on our homes, or murderous paramilitaries were hell-bent on eradicating us and our families, we would doubtless also be taking to the seas in whatever vessels were to hand. We would doubtless also fall into the hands of unscrupulous smugglers and traffickers, who would mercilessly exploit our vulnerabilities for their own considerable financial gain. Our lives would be reduced to the clothes we have on our backs – or sometimes our lives would be lost in our desperate efforts to reach safety and the hope of a life without fear.
To suggest that lawyers — who seek to represent some of the most vulnerable people living in these islands — are subversive, is itself subversive. It suggests that laws passed by parliament are themselves subversive. It suggests that the rule of law — where no one, not even a government minister, is above the law — is also subversive. It is utterly shameful to depict the legal profession in this way. The Home Office needs to issue an immediate apology for its egregious hostility to the legal profession and by extension to those whose rights lawyers are trying valiantly to defend. Without an independent legal profession, there can be no rule of law, and powerful actors including state actors and criminal gangs, can never be held to account or brought to justice. The Home Office needs to stand by our legal system, our system of parliamentary democracy, and the rule of law – not seek to denigrate it in the eyes of the world.
[EDITOR’S UPDATE: On 25 October, the premier British daily newspaper, The Guardian, published a letter signed by eight hundred two practicing lawyers, legal academics, and retired judges who “invite” Home Secretary Patel and Prime Minister Boris Johnson to “behave honourably by apologising for their display of hostility” to “lawyers seeking to hold the government to the law.” (Spelling and civility peculiar to the UK).
“Such attacks,” they wrote, “endanger not only the personal safety of lawyers and others working for the justice system,” but also “undermine the rule of law which ministers and lawyers alike are duty bound to uphold.”
Signers included three retired justices of the UK Supreme Court, five retired lord justices of appeal, six other high court judges, and hundreds of barristers and solicitors, law professors, and other legal academics, Sian Lewis-Anthony among them.
[Editor’s Note: Dr. Mohamed ‘Arafa is a law professor at Alexandria University, in Egypt, currently teaching classes in Islamic law and comparative Middle Eastern law at both Cornell Law School and Indiana University McKinney School of Law. By my count he has taught on four continents, and possibly one or two continents I haven’t counted.
Other subjects of his teaching and scholarship include criminal law, white collar crimes, human rights law, and transitional justice. Till 2018 he was managing editor of the Arab Law Quarterly in London.
Last year, Pope Francis visited the United Arab Emirates for three days to promote peace and tolerance with the Muslim world. It was an historic first visit in the Arabian Peninsula by a pontiff.
Professor ‘Arafa writes here about the contemporary human rights vision of that visit in relation to another visit, fourteen hundred years ago, of another religious leader.]
The Imām and (NOT Versus) the Pope: Awakening Religious Consciousness — In the Memory of the Prophet Mohammad’s Constitution
Universal statements recently signed by Muslim spiritual leaders define a concept of pledged citizenship that focuses on a shape of relationship justified more on “religiosity” than on “religion.” That refers to the “Human Fraternity for World Peace and Living Together” and the Mārrākesh declarations. For Muslim communities, international rules must be compatible within the Islamic legal fiqh (jurisprudence). Thus, the citizenship notion derives back to a memorable document – the Medinā Charter (Mohammad’s Constitution) of 622 CE. It is substantial to read that Charter under the light of today’s call, to draw the concept of “inclusive citizenship” in coherence with the early Classical Sharie‘a along with these current attempts of interreligious dialogue. That Charter is a legal source that permits this new interpretation.
Mohammad’s düstür (Constitution) includes not only the religious meanings but also proves that under Sharie‘a, mu‘āhādāt/mithāq (agreements) are dutifully valuable, and, hence to endeavor for processing them is beneficial; as a paradigm of international peace treaties along with some trans-historical messages, so to draw a new interpretation appropriate for the modern – international – Muslim Ummāh (nation/community). This understanding assumes that some religious messages can have implications in common with other religious groups, as of the unity of religious practice. Moreover, the current collaboration among global faiths needs to be a product of pluralism – respecting our differences – and a recognition of the path that global creeds are entwined even as they appear in unique traditions. Historically, it is likely to realize complex mutual venues when borders and limits between the religious customs were blurred and constantly redrawn. So, historical interpretation is crucial to understand the document’s meanings for the initial religious society, and to extract from it new concepts to share with other religious denominations, as this interreligious interpretation “generates” new cultural ideals to be applied in the modern discourse of international human rights.
The Abu Dhābi Document
On February 4, 2019, Pope Francis made an apostolic trip to the Middle East, especially, to Abu Dhābi in the United Arab Emirates. The main outcome of it was the document “Human Fraternity for World Peace and Living Together,” signed by the Pope and the Grand Imām of Al-Azhār Ahmad āl-Tayieb. It represents the cornerstone regarding the relations between Christianity and Islam, but so far it has not received the interest that it deserves. On the Catholic side, the declaration has its robust theoretical precedent in the Second Vatican Council’s Declaration (the relations between the Catholic Church and the non-Christian religions). On the Muslim side, the Mārrākesh Declaration on the Rights of Religious Minorities in Predominantly Muslim Majority Communities of January 25-27, 2016, and the Al-Azhār Declaration on the conference “Freedom, Citizenship, Diversity and Integration” represent the main precedents within the Muslim World.
The document’s preface affirms that “Faith leads a believer to see in the other a brother or sister to be supported and loved,” invites “all persons who have faith in God and faith in human fraternity to unite and work together.” The Pope and the Imām speak “in the name of God who has created all human beings equal in rights, duties and dignity,” “in the name of innocent human life that God has forbidden to kill,” “in the name of the poor,” “in the name of orphans, widows, refugees and those exiled from their homes and their countries…(and) all victims of wars (and) persecution.” Al-Azhār along with the Catholic Church, “declare the adoption of a culture of dialogue as the path; mutual cooperation as the code of conduct; reciprocal understanding as a method and standard.” A view of global law is understood when both parties confirm that:
We…call upon ourselves, upon the leaders of the world as well as the architects of international policy and world economy, to work strenuously to spread the culture of tolerance and of living together in peace; to intervene at the earliest opportunity to stop the shedding of innocent blood and bring an end to wars, conflicts, environmental decay and the moral and cultural decline that the world is presently experiencing.
Both leaders ask all people of religion, culture, and the media, to revive and spread “the values of peace, justice, goodness, beauty, human fraternity and coexistence.” Additionally, they decisively confirm their faith “that among the most important causes of the crises of the modern world are a desensitized human conscience, a distancing from religious values and a prevailing individualism accompanied by materialistic philosophies.” Although recognizing the optimistic steps taken by modern civilization, the declaration underscores the “moral deterioration that influences international action and a weakening of spiritual values and responsibility,” which leads many “to fall either into a vortex of atheistic, agnostic or religious extremism, or into blind and fanatic extremism.” Further, both leaders sustain the vital significance of the family, and the importance “of awakening religious awareness,” particularly in youth, “to confront tendencies that are individualistic, selfish, conflicting, and also address radicalism and blind extremism in all its forms and expressions.” Both recall that the Creator “granted us the gift of life to protect it. It is a gift that no one has the right to take away, threaten or manipulate to suit oneself. Indeed, everyone must safeguard it from its beginning up to its natural end.” Thus, they condemn all practices that represent a threat to life, such as genocide, terrorism, abortion, human trafficking, forced displacement, euthanasia, etc., and said that “religions must never incite war, hateful attitudes, hostility and extremism, nor must they incite violence or the shedding of blood. These tragic realities are the consequence of a deviation from religious teachings. They result from a political manipulation of religions and from interpretations made by religious groups.”
Likewise they declare “We thus call upon all concerned to stop using religions to incite hatred, violence, extremism and blind fanaticism, and to refrain from using the name of God to justify acts of murder, exile, terrorism and oppression” and recall that “God, the Almighty, has no need to be defended by anyone and does not want His name to be used to terrorize people.” Accordingly, Islam and Christianity’s main message is that:
religions endorse brotherhood;
religious freedom must be assured to everyone and justified by her/his faith;
only the collaboration between justice and mercy leads to basic conditions of human life;
the world’s problems can only be solved through the dialogue, and
interreligious discourse must include common values, endorsing the good, and averting “useless debates.”
Furthermore, all places of worship must be legally protected, and, in any event, they should not be attacked for purported religious motives, and terrorist activities shall be condemned by religions, without any appeal. In this regard, the document reads “the protection of places of worship – synagogues, churches and mosques – is a duty guaranteed by religions, human values, laws and international agreements [necessity to protect religious minorities]. Every attempt to attack places of worship or threaten them by violent assaults, bombings or destruction, is a deviation from the teachings of religions as well as a clear violation of international law.” The Pope and the Imām said everyone has equal rights and individuals are not subject to rights because of their membership in a group, for instance to a religion or an ethnic group – this is to prevent degrading “minority” categories (women, children, the elderly and the disabled). Rather, religious individuals have rights because they are citizens, [and] different cultures should enrich each other, assuring them basic human rights.
Accordingly, this document includes “legal” contents that are explicitly cited and plainly recalls the international human rights law norms. It emphasized the important role of religions in the construction of world peace, and upholds “The firm conviction that authentic teachings of religions invite us to remain rooted in the values of peace; to defend the values of mutual understanding, human fraternity and harmonious coexistence; to re-establish wisdom, justice and love; and to reawaken religious awareness…so that future generations may be protected from…materialistic thinking and from dangerous policies of unbridled greed and indifference that are based on the law of force and not on the force of law [emphasis added].”
Human Rights Discourse Status Quo and the Medinā Charter
Regarding the freedom of religion, the text reads “freedom is a right of every person: each individual enjoys the freedom of belief, thought, expression and action. The pluralism and the diversity of religions, color, sex, race and language are willed by God…through which He created human beings. This divine wisdom is the source from which [this right/freedom]…to be different derives. Therefore, the fact that people are forced to adhere to a certain religion or culture must be rejected, as too the imposition of a cultural way of life that others do not accept.” More precisely, the Marrakesh Declaration reads:
Whereas this year marks the 1,400th anniversary of the Charter of Medinā, a constitutional contract between the Prophet Mohammad…and the people of Medinā, which guaranteed the religious liberty of all, regardless of faith…[we,] along with representatives of Islamic and international organizations…to reaffirm the principles of [that Charter]…declare hereby our firm commitment to the principles articulated in [that] Charter, whose provisions contained a number of the principles of constitutional contractual citizenship, such as freedom of movement, property ownership, mutual solidarity and defense, as well as principles of justice and equality before the law; [and that the objectives of the Charter]…provide a suitable framework for national constitutions in countries with Muslim majorities, and the United Nations Charter and related documents, such as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, are in harmony with the Charter of Medinā, including consideration for public order.
“Human Fraternity for World Peace and Living Together” reflects the legal concept of “citizenship” as a tool of global control and protection of religious rights. It is described in this way:
The concept of citizenship is based on the equality of rights and duties, under which all enjoy justice. It is therefore crucial to establish in our societies the concept of full citizenship and reject the discriminatory use of the term minorities which engenders feelings of isolation and inferiority. Its misuse paves the way for hostility and discord; it undoes any successes and takes away the religious and civil rights of some citizens who are thus discriminated against…
Pluralism Voices
Saïd Arjomand says Article 15 of the Charter of Medinā marks “the institution of religious pluralism in Islam, which later developed into the recognition of ‘those to whom we have given the book’ (The Qur’an 2:121; 6:21, etc.), or more frequently, the ‘peoples of the book’ (Q. 2:63, 65, etc.) under the protection (dhimmāh) of God. Religious pluralism in Medinā was endorsed in the Qur’ān: ‘There is no compulsion in religion.’”
Thus, the political idea of inclusive citizenship (cultural inclusive groups) is related to the dogmatic notion of fraternity and its recognition as “vertical,” based on superiority and faith in God. This brotherhood is not only emotional or sentimental; it is rather a solid message with a political value. Accordingly, it leads – no doubt – directly to reflect on the citizenship concept: we are all brothers, and hence citizens with equal rights and duties, under whose shadow everyone enjoys justice. Despite the Qurā’nic concept of dhimmāh (protection Q. 9:29), the notion of “minority” vanishes as it leads to tribalism and antagonism. Generally speaking, these declarations acknowledge the rampant use of violence to “enforce perspectives” and resolve conflicts in numerous parts of the Muslim world and emphasize the suffering of minority groups that have endured in the region for centuries. The document quotes Qurā’nic texts that underline the key Islamic teachings about the protection for minorities (prohibition of religious compulsion (Q. 2:256), crucial bonds of humanity among different societies and races (Q. 13:49), the need for kindness with others (Q. 60:8), and the obligation to respect contracts and covenants (Q. 16:91). Also, Mohammad’s early followers were not called “muslimūn”, but rather “mu’minūn.” Uri Rubin affirms that “Being recognized as mu’minūn, keep to their own dīn…li-Yāhudi dinuhum wā li-l-musliminā dinuhum (the Jews shall maintain their own religion and the Muslims theirs)…the latter clause seems to convey the idea that the dīn (religion), of both parties has equal merit so…each party has the right to go on adhering to its own dīn.”
These documents reflect – directly or indirectly – Mohammad’s Constitution, as a model for contractual citizenship to guarantee equal rights for all under the law within the global legal standards, and to call Muslim ‘ulmā’ā (jurists) and authorities to use that Charter as a base for evolving contractual citizenship models in their national constitutions and develop a jurisprudence of that concept as it is deeply rooted in Islamic Sharie‘a principles and mindful of global changes. Muslim scholars argued that the 2017 Al-Azhār statement – as an Islamic system of governance – is the theoretical precedent of the Abu Dhābi proclamation that clarified the relationship among Muslims and non-Muslims. The Medinā Charter did not imply any sort of discrimination or exclusion of any social group, but it included policies founded upon religious, ethnic and social pluralism, as it reads “one community to the exclusion of others” and non-Muslims had the same rights and responsibilities of Muslims. Therefore, Mohammad’s Constitution declined to use “minorities” term and against the ‘blind loyalty’ in human rights’ discourse to avoid discrimination, racism, and disloyalty that jeopardize the states’ internal national security.
In fact, it should be noted that the three documents are not international treaties (not agreements between States) – as legal actors – but they regulate the freedom of belief, especially minorities in Christian and Muslim nations, prompting the behaviors and the agency of the faithful. Many scholars noticed that there can be a global contest between secular and divine norms (orders) due to the normative relevance of sacred classical legal customs. Legal order represents the source of the monitoring power of religions, as of their own symbolic appeal, an interpretive hierarchy, separate constitutive narratives, numerous jurisdictional concepts and conflict resolution standards, cross-border affiliations, global solidarity, and international mobilization capacity. Such documents embody global law sources, that can have an efficient legal regulatory force, different from the one of the States and international organizations. This global law is non-state law; not concerned with formalism and is polycentric and complex with more regulatory forces. If we admit the presence and the legal implication of a great diversity of universal performs – in political and jurisprudential frameworks – legal norms, values, and procedures for managing global human rights, interests, goods, creeds, groups and cultures, these agreements appear to have the features to be among those universal sources of regulation.
To conclude, the Medinā Charter was neither a constitution in the modern sense — because it lacks the nature of a social contract between equals — nor a constitution of the āl-dāwlāh āl-islāmiyyāh (Islamic State), as the Prophet was not interested in establishing a governmental system. Rather it appears to have been essentially a pact tackling the link between “religious” people of various “religions.” The real purpose was to launch a new order to maintain security, self-government, and religious respect among all. In other words, it was to establish a confederation where the tie of religiosity would usurp the tie of kinship, which was preponderant at that time and that was the reason for enduring conflicts and feuds in the Arab peninsula.
I’m just a plainspoken Colorado criminal defense lawyer, but the way I see it…
If I had a hunting accident and blew half my fingers off, I’d still have plenty of room to count the number of Republican lawyers in public life I’m still proud of.
But there’s one in Clearwater, Florida, who’d make me wish for my fingers back so I could include him and a few of his colleagues.
Hell, I’d move to Florida just to vote for him, if he hadn’t already announced his retirement.
Bob Dillinger has been the elected public defender there since 1996.
From the start he became an advocate for the disenfranchised, for the mentally ill, for the homeless, who often find their way into court. When he wasn’t working selflessly to spare some of the least of us from the worst penalty we can inflict on them, of death, he was working to provide encouragement, food, and clothing to disadvantaged children at risk of becoming those people.
He was re-elected in 2000, 2004, 2008, 2012, and 2016.
At his last election it was reported that Jesus Christ Himself voted for him by absentee ballot (Donald Trump instantly whined that was voter fraud).
None of that was what drew me to him. The Pinellas and Pasco counties public defender website did that. Most such website addresses are fairly bland: Brooklyn Defender Services is bds.org; the Los Angeles County Public Defender is pubdef.lacounty.gov; my own state’s public defender address is coloradodefenders.us.
We are the hope. For no other reason than that I checked out his website.
What I saw there was something Bob Dillinger said when he first addressed the men and women with whom he would work for the defense of the seemingly indefensible that is often the work of the public defender. It moved me to remembered tears of when I first felt inspired to champion all the little men and women ganged up upon by the awesome forces of the government — at least till I’d actually met some of those little men and women. (Luckily I met some more who kept me going over the years.)
On his last day, on 31 December, this Atticus Finch of Clearwater will go out with the old year.
On his first day, at his swearing-in ceremony, twenty-three years ago, this is what he said:
We are the hope.
We are the hope of the poor;
We are the hope of those in the system who are innocent;
We are the hope of those overcharged;
We are the hope of the mentally ill that society wants to either warehouse or ignore;
We are the hope of the juveniles who need help and guidance from a system that offers little of either;
We are the hope — probably the only hope — of those our society seeks to execute;
I’m just a plainspoken Colorado criminal defense lawyer, but the way I see it…
I read the news today that the former leaders of a veterans’ home were indicted on charges of criminal neglect after seventy-six residents died of the coronavirus.
As I write this, two hundred seven thousand, eight hundred twelve residents of the United States have died of the virus, and the leader of our home has yet to be indicted.
Criminally negligent homicide is the killing of a human being that results from the careless performance of a legal or illegal act in which the danger of death is apparent.
Donald Trump’s best and brightest medical advisors have been telling him for more than half a year about the danger of death from Covid-19, yet he continues to lie about it, being sure to protect himself while luring supporters to risk all at super-spreader campaign rallies where he is pleased best when they are masked least.
There is another term in the law for what he demonstrates: depraved indifference, which is an act so reckless and careless of the safety of others that it shows a complete lack of regard for human life.
In the President’s defense is his own assertion that human lives — at least human lives of value to him — have not been taken at all.
“It affects virtually nobody,” Trump said the other day, mere hours before the United States death toll had reached two hundred thousand nobodies. “It’s an amazing thing.” It takes only the old who are already sick, he virtually crowed; those people don’t count.
The New York Times has been documenting these nobodies since March, with “Those We’ve Lost.” At the same time the series began, Trump was urging churches to pack their pews for Easter Sunday.
They start with Vittorio Gregotti, who died in Milan a month of Sundays earlier. The Italian modernist architect rebuilt the stadium that hosted the 1992 Barcelona Summer Olympics. But he was ninety-two, so he was nobody.
The first six of the more than three hundred lost lives already illuminated by the Times were older than sixty-five, the age group the Centers for Disease Control says are at highest risk.
The seventh on the list, Nashom Wooden, was only fifty. But a Manhattan drag performer in Trumpland? Still a nobody.
Dez-Ann Romain was thirty-six, described as an innovative high school principal with grit and heart, the first New York City school employee to die of coronavirus. Another but: she was black; a nobody.
I love rock ’n’ roll as much as the next fellow, but the guy who actually wrote that song, Alan Merrill, was one of these nobodies.
Kious Kelly, the Times reports, may have been the first nurse in New York to die of Covid-19. His death highlighted the shortage of personal protective equipment for American doctors at the same time the Trump Administration was boasting of having sent nearly eighteen tons of the stuff to China. Kelly, forty-eight, worked in a blue state where he was a nobody, but could have been somebody had he worked instead in the red state where they sent all the PPE.
A thirty-three-year-old advocate for disability rights, a fifty-nine-year-old jazz trumpet virtuoso, a twenty-two-year-old new dad, a forty-eight-year-old police detective — two hundred seven thousand more and growing a thousand more a day — all of them nobodies in Donald Trump’s sparsely populated mind.
But here’s the thing about these nobodies: they are survived by millions of friends and family who will remember exactly which somebody let these people die while perfecting his three-foot putt.
I’m just a plainspoken Colorado criminal defense lawyer, but the way I see it…
Clearly, a world without Ruth Bader Ginsburg, where the graceless man who called her an absolute disgrace to the Supreme Court remains in it, is an unfair world.
Unfair too is that this freakishly small while morbidly obese man may nominate as her replacement someone as unfit for her job as he is for his. (In my grief at her loss I too am unfair, for while it is true that his last pick for the court was a former beer-swilling sexual predator and latter-day beer-swilling pretentiously indignant red-faced liar — a man much like himself, but for the beer — his first pick was, if only by accident, a decent and well-qualified jurist.)
R.B.G., like M.L.K., had a dream: his that some day black people would enjoy equal citizenship with white people; hers that women would enjoy equal citizenship with men. He died too soon. She died after a long life, yet also too soon. The gains she devoted her career to achieving for women face hot and imminent attack from lordly men and subservient women who believe that Eve was created only to be helpmate to Adam.
To her that was nonsense. Asked when there would be enough women on the Supreme Court, she would say, “When there are nine.”
The touchstone of her body of legal work, both as a lawyer arguing before the Court and as a Justice on its bench, was the equal-protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, which provides that “nor shall any state…deny to any person…the equal protection of the laws.”
Equal protection. She resented that the male establishment thought that demanding equal protection was somehow seeking favor for women. She frequently quoted (including while arguing before the Court) her predecessor in the fight, famed abolitionist Sarah Grimké, who wrote in 1837, “I ask no favors for my sex. All I ask of our brethren, is that they take their feet off our necks.”
She worked not only to protect women’s rights, but also to uncover the rights of women that weren’t in the consciousness of men as even being rights. Not even fifty years ago, only men were thought fit to execute estates. Ginsburg’s brief in a case challenging that preference led the Court to rule, for the first time, that such discrimination, on the basis of sex, violates the equal-protection clause.
As Justice Ginsburg, she wrote the majority opinion that decided the Virginia Military Institute’s discrimination against female students likewise violated equal protection.
There were so many more. So much more to this champion of women’s rights, of human rights.
Ten years ago, Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s husband Marty wrote a last love letter to her as he lay dying. “What a treat it has been,” he wrote, “to watch you progress to the very top of the legal world.”