More 'Grrls in transition

Following on an earlier post, we're pleased to report that still more IntLawGrrls are on the move:
► This fall guest/alumna Caitlyn Antrim (left) will be an Adjunct Professor at American University Washington College of Law, co-teaching a course in her area of specialization, the Law of the Sea.
► Guest/alumna Lisa Laplante (right), an expert on transitional justice, will be a Visiting Assistant Professor at the University of Connecticut School of Law in the fall semester.
► And guest/alumna Deborah Popowski (left), currently a Clinical Instructor at the Harvard Law School International Human Rights Clinic, has a Lecturer in Law appointment at Harvard Law School for next fall.
Heartfelt congratulations!

Guest blogger: Catherine Lanctot

IntLawGrrls is delighted to welcome guest blogger Catherine Lanctot (left), Professor of Law at Villanova University Law School in Pennsylvania, where she teaches Constitutional Law, American Legal History, and Legal Ethics. Cathy joined the Villanova faculty in 1988, after several years with the Civil Division of the U.S. Department of Justice. Her earlier scholarship was in the areas of employment discrimination and legal ethics in cyberspace. As is detailed in her 1st post below, Cathy's now working on the legal history of the 20th century women's suffrage movement, focusing particularly on the militant activities of Alice Paul and the National Woman’s Party. (Thanks to Legal History Blog for the head's up on this scholarly project.)

Cathy dedicates her work to the Brooklyn-born Lucy Burns, who joins other transnational foremothers in the list just below the "visiting from ..." map at right. As Cathy explains in her 2d post below, Burns endured arrests and detention in Britain and the United States in the course of campaigning for women's suffrage.

Side note: In 2007 Cathy took time out from her research project to appear on the game show Jeopardy!, where she was a 5-time winner and later a participant in the Tournament of Champions. After that brief brush with fame and fortune, she reports that she's now "retreated to the relative obscurity of academia!"

Lucy Burns, transnational foremother

In addition to guest-posting on my suffrage research project, I'd like to add another transnational foremother to those already honored by IntLawGrrls.
My nominee, Lucy Burns (left), is one of many unsung champions of the international suffrage movement. An Irish Catholic from Brooklyn, Burns met Alice Paul -- coincidentally, the transnational foremother of another IntLawGrrls guest blogger, Deborah Popowski -- in London in June 1909. Burns and Paul were under arrest for participating in a suffragette demonstration. During the 6 months that followed, the 2 young women were arrested multiple times for interrupting male politicians with demands for votes for women. In 1910, Paul returned to the United States after a month of grueling forcible-feeding in a London jail; Burns, however, stayed on as an organizer for Emmeline Pankhurst’s militant suffrage group until 1912.
Upon her return to America, Burns joined Paul and a small group of women in organizing the largest suffrage demonstration in history, timed to coincide with the inauguration of President Woodrow Wilson in March 1913. After several years of increasingly militant protest, Burns became one of the principal architects of the 1917 picket campaign. She drafted the infamous “Kaiser Wilson” banner, held below right by an unidentified woman, which prompted riots against the suffragists. Later, while in prison for picketing, Burns crafted a petition to authorities making the unprecedented demand that the imprisoned suffragists be treated as political prisoners.
During the “Night of Terror” at the Occoquan, N.Y., workhouse when suffrage prisoners were beaten into submission by prison authorities, Burns spent a night with her arms chained over her head, exhorting her colleagues to remain strong and defiant. (above left; photo credit) She later was forcibly fed during her hunger strike.
After the suffrage years, Burns retired to private life to care for her extended family.
Burns is said to have spent more time in jail for suffrage than any other American woman. Alice Paul described her friend as

about a thousand times more valiant than I, by nature.

We can all be inspired by Burns' steadfast courage and commitment to the cause of equality.

On January 11, ...

... 1885, suffragist Alice Paul was born to "an upper middle-class Quaker family" in Moorestown, New Jersey. Paul (right) attended Swarthmore College and earned a doctorate in social work from the University of Pennsylvania. Graduate studies took her to England, where she embraced the militant feminism of Emmeline Pankhurst and associates. Back home in the United States, Paul applied the lessons she'd learned to raise public consciousness on the suffrage issue. She is perhaps best known for unflagging, yet unsuccessful, efforts to have the Equal Rights Amendment, introduced in 1923, become part of the Constitution. In draft, that amendment stated: "Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or any state on account of sex." Paul is an inspiration to IntLawGrrls guest blogger Deborah Popowski.
... 2002, the 1st plane of persons captured during the post-9/11 counterassault in Afghanistan were brought to the U.S. naval base at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, where they faced indefinite detention, most without charges or trial. (photo credit) As we've posted (39 posts so far!), the camp remains open to this day. About 700 persons, seized not only in Afghanistan but also at other sites in what the U.S. executive calls the "Global War on Terror," have been detained there. The GTMO detainee population has dropped. But it's increased at another offshore U.S. military site -- Bagram, mentioned in my article on Gitmo. The New York Times reported earlier this week:

The American detention center, established at the Bagram military base as a temporary screening site after the invasion of Afghanistan in 2001, is now teeming with some 630 prisoners — more than twice the 275 being held at Guantánamo.

The American Civil Liberties Union's marking the date with the message at right.

In Argentina, at least, justice

"Looks like justice has arrived in Argentina, at least."
This was my mother's response to articles yesterday, by the Associated Press and Página/12, reporting that an Argentine court had convicted 7 former military officers and one ex-police official of crimes against humanity for acts of kidnapping, torture, and disappearances committed during Argentina’s 1976-1983 military regime. The men were sentenced to 20-25 years in prison.
Not sure if she meant it that way, but I took the “at least” as a reference to my own quixotic quest for accountability in the United States of today. The comparison may seem severe to some – but probably not to many Latin Americans. Having been born under that dictatorship and raised hearing stories of torture, disappearances, habeas suspension, surveillance, secret trials of subversives, and (of course) amnesty laws, I have never found the association so far-fetched. (For a more developed comparison between 1970s Argentina and today’s US, see Charles H. Brower II, Nunca Más or Déjà Vu?, 47 Virginia Journal of International Law 525 (2007).)
So maybe this is a preview of the justice that we, too, might see 30 years from now – but only if we lay the groundwork now. As is always the case, we will have no transition because (haven’t you heard?) we are already a democracy. We will get no truth commission because those are reserved for the brown people south of the equator, not civilized societies like ours. Instead, we get Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi, soon, maybe, Hillary Clinton – or, if we’re “really” lucky, Barack Obama. And life will go on as it used to in the Bill Clinton years, easy to ignore the torture neatly tucked away under the rug. Mainstream Democrats play nice and ignore the crimes they now reserve the power to commit, clumsily trying (and failing) to win political points by pursuing petty misdemeanors instead. (Proof of their pusillanimity's here, here, here, and here.)
As advocates, we fight the legal battles and sweat hard for the New York Times coverage. These are important, but not nearly enough. Without protest, without emotion, without people, we get nowhere. The Argentine courts did not wake up one day and realize that amnesty was unconstitutional. It took politics to change the courts, and it took people to change politics. In Argentina, a generation of angry youth took to the streets, organized communities, and raised a collective voice to shame the torturers when the law fell silent. Those youths played a small but tangible part to wake the country from its stupor.
To translate, roughly, Pascual Guerrieri, the words of one of the convicted officers:

' I reject the term repressor. We were soldiers paid by the people, those who stand behind me and around me. We went out there to restore order. We do not look like murderers. We look like soldiers who fulfilled their duty.'

I’m eerily reminded of John Kiriakou, the former CIA agent whom the Times described as a "43-year-old father of four," and of all those nice-looking torturing CIA agents and lawyers whose reputations and careers Professor Jack Goldsmith, in the same article, mourns in advance.

The choice is yours, mine, all of ours: Will we be agents of change? Or the ones whom the torturer thinks he serves?

(See below for details on today's guest blogger, Deborah Popowski.)

Guest Blogger: Deborah Popowski

Today IntLawGrrls welcomes its 2d guest blogger, Deborah Popowski, author of the above post on accountability, in Argentina and in the United States.
A 3d-year law student at Harvard, Deborah (left), along with fellow student Fernando Delgado, cofounded Stop Torture: The Harvard Anti-Torture Coalition. This Anti-Torture Group's a division of HLS Advocates for Human Rights, a student organization of which Deborah's also co-president. The group provides volunteer support to the Harvard International Human Rights Clinic, coordinates its own projects under faculty supervision, and engages in public education, lobbying, and direct action. Additionally, Deborah's worked on human rights issues in Latin America, Africa, and the Middle East. She interned for Manfred Nowak, the United Nations' current Special Rapporteur on Torture; for Gitanjali Gutierrez, staff attorney for the Guantánamo division of the Center for Constitutional Rights; and for Justiça Global, a Brazilian NGO that litigates before the Inter-American human rights system.
After receiving a degree in political science and social though from the University of Virginia, Deborah worked in journalism and in international development -- including 2 years' service with the Peace Corps. An Argentina-born naturalized U.S. citizen, she is proficient in 5 languages.
Deborah dedicates her post to her own IntLawGrrls inspiration, the suffragist Alice Paul.
Heartfelt thanks for your contribution, Deborah!