PGHIMC - Pittsburgh Independent Media Center

Debating the Status of Detainees in the 'War On Terror'
by Pitt Law National Lawyers Guild Tuesday, Nov. 06, 2007 at 1:59 AM

DEBATING THE STATUS OF DETAINEES IN THE 'WAR ON TERROR': A Review of the Khadr Case

On November 16th, Marjorie Cohn, president of the National Lawyers Guild, and Michael Lewis, former U.S. naval officer, will engage in a debate on torture and detainee treatment under the Bush Administration. The event is hosted by the University of Pittsburgh Chapter of the National Lawyers Guild and the Pitt Law Federalist Society. The debate will be moderated by Elena Baylis, associate professor of law at the University of Pittsburgh.

Marjorie Cohn is the President of the National Lawyers Guild, a professor of law at Thomas Jefferson University and the U.S representative to the executive committee of the Association of American Jurists. Cohn is a news consultant for CBS News, a court analyst for Court TV and has provided legal and political commentary for the BBC, CNN and NPR. Her most recent publication is Cowboy Republic: Six Ways the Bush Gang Has Defied the Law. She holds a J.D. from Santa Clara University and a B.A. from Stanford University.

Michael Lewis is a former US naval officer and an assistant professor of law at Ohio Northern University. Lewis flew F-14's for the United States Navy in Operation Desert Shield, conducted strike planning for Desert Storm and was deployed to the Persian Gulf to enforce the no-fly zone over Iraq. His upcoming publication in the University of Richmond Law Review is entitled International Myopia: Hamdan’s Shortcut to ‘Victory’. He holds a J.D. from Harvard University and a B.A. from John Hopkins University.

The National Lawyers Guild is dedicated to the need for basic change in the structure of our political and economic system and seeks to unite lawyers, law students, legal workers and jailhouse lawyers in an organization that shall function as an effective political and social force in the service of the peoples, to the end that human rights shall be regarded as more sacred than property interests.

The Federalist Society is dedicated to reforming the current legal order and the principles that the state exists to preserve freedom, that the separation of governmental powers is central to our Constitution, and that it is emphatically the province and duty of the judiciary to say what the law is, not what it should be.

This free, public debate will be held from 4:30-6:00pm on November 16th in the Teplitz Memorial Courtroom located in the Barco Law Building at 3900 Forbes Ave., Pittsburgh, Pa. Light refreshments will be served.

For more information contact: rmr6417@pitt.edu.

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11/5/07

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