HLS Students Stage Funeral

Members of Harvard Law School (HLS) Advocates for Human Rights held a mock funeral outside of Harkness Commons yesterday afternoon to protest what they saw as the unconstitutionality of a bill authorizing military tribunals to try Guantanamo detainees, passed by the House and Senate last week.

Some donned placards with names of congressmen who supported the bill and the words “Vote for Torture 2006.” Some wore black bags over their heads.

Micheal Jones, a staff member of the HLS Human Rights Program, read a eulogy that began “today we mourn the death of a living document” as students dropped daisies on a pile of dirt below a cardboard headstone that read “RIP the Constitution.”

The mock funeral took place after an open-mic forum in which speakers expressed their views on U.S. treatment of detainees, and their opposition to or support for the Guantanamo bill.

The legislation resulted from a compromise between the Bush administration and a group of Republican senators who believed that the bill initially proposed by the administration was unconstitutional.

The administration has been pushing for legislation on the treatment of detainees since a Supreme Court decision in June struck down the military tribunal system used in Guantanamo to try terror suspects.

An HLS third-year student, Britton A. Schwartz, told the audience that the recent measure “leaves Guantanamo in its status as a legal black hole.”

Deborah A. Popowski, a member of HLS Advocates for Human Rights and second-year student at HLS, claimed the bill “leaves ample room for torture.”

But an HLS first-year, Justin R. Walker, said he approved of the administration’s handling of terror suspects.

He claimed that it has been documented that Guantanamo prisoners enjoy amenities like a library of 3,500 books, a basketball court, ping pong tables, treadmills, and bottled water with every meal. He also argued that 22 former Guantanamo prisoners had returned to combat against America.

A third-year HLS student, Stephanie E. Brewer, who followed Walker in front of the microphone, said, “if all the United States government has to do to have a license to torture people is provide bottled water at each meal, we have a problem.”

On Sept. 27, over 600 law professors, including 30 HLS faculty members, submitted a letter urging Congress to reject the “compromise” bill.

“Taken together, the bill’s provisions rewrite American law to evade the fundamental principles of separation of powers, due process, habeas corpus, fair trials, and the rule of law, principles that, together, prohibit state-sanctioned violence,” the letter, posted on the HLS website, read.