First a Bystander, Now at Center of 'Storm'

Brandt Goldstein, the author of “Storming the Court,” was noticeable from across the street. Sure, I had seen his picture on the dustcover of the book, but there was no mistaking that this tall, gaunt-faced man was a writer: Goldstein was wearing a black turtleneck and square rimmed glasses. He was the very image of a bohemian artiste.

So it was hard to see the Yale Law School graduate as a full-time attorney at a Washington, DC law firm, where he worked until Oct. 1997. He left the profession to pursue writing, and late the next year, he started to work on his first book.

Not surprisingly, “Storming the Court” is immersed in law, focusing on the protracted legal battles that now-Yale Law Dean Harold H. Koh ’75 and a shifting band of students fought against the elder Bush and Clinton administrations on behalf of Haitian refugees detained at Guantánamo Bay.

The book began as a tale about America’s occasional betrayal of its age-old reputation as a haven for refugees.

“After 9/11, it is also a cautionary tale about how we use our naval base at Guantanamo as an extralegal camp without accountability,” Goldstein says.

The first Yale lawsuits were filed in 1992 when Goldstein was a third-year law student working on a project to help New Haven’s homeless population. Even though Koh was his mentor, Goldstein did not join the cause: he was afraid of being unable to finish his graduation requirements. But the unfolding drama grabbed his attention.

“I could tell something important was happening and it ate at me for years,” he says.

Goldstein came back to the story, but writing about the episode was not without its fair share of obstacles. Character continuity was an issue without a resolution: students who initiated the effort would leave, and new ones would jump on board.

“Readers don’t want characters to appear half way through the book, or disappear half way,” Goldstein says.

And then, like any other scribe, he had writer’s block.

Setting down his egg-and-cheese bagel, Goldstein explains that his prose felt “stilted and too removed.” He finally found his voice after writing the early scene when Koh—described as “a sturdy Asian man” with an overflowing briefcase—first bursts into classroom and the narrative.

“That was the first scene that I said ‘I got it,’” Goldstein says. “‘I know how I want to write this thing.’”

Writing was one thing, but gathering information through interviews was another. Yvonne Pascal, the tortured Haitian refugee whose journey through Guantánamo is painstakingly detailed, was very reluctant to talk.

“She had been a bit of a cause celebre” when she finally arrived in America, Goldstein explains, but after the reporters got her story, she dropped off their radar.

“She felt she had been used by the media,” he says. “I had to gain her trust.” Many times when Goldstein visited Pascal, he would sit and not ask any questions.

The author is passionate about the suffering that Pascal endured, and he admits that keeping his own opinions in check was sometimes difficult.

“I tried very hard to write as objectively as I could,” he says, but “I had a very hard time with that.”

“At the end of the day, the way we treated Yvonne Pascal at Guantánamo was shameful,” he says.

As I am about to rush off to class, I ask Goldstein what is next. Perhaps a return to the law?

He smiles: “Only as a writer.”

Fitting.