Public Interest

In The Age Of Trump, Constitutional Lawyers Get Strategic

A clear mission keeps the Center for Constitutional Rights grounded in the busy world of challenging Trump.

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So Sheriff Joe got a pardon.

Frankly, that shouldn’t shock anyone. Trump kicked off his campaign by tagging Mexicans as murderers and rapists and drove it home with a barrage of attacks against the sanctity of the judicial system by ripping the “so-called judges.” It would actually be a stunning failure to deliver on his campaign promises if he let some radical liberal — a role played by George W. Bush appointee Judge G. Murray Snow in the bizarre reality we find ourselves slogging through — punish the country’s foremost authority on flagrantly abusing the human rights of Latinx.

One organization at the forefront of that fight — and a group with a long history of battling Sheriff Joe’s skulduggery — is the Center for Constitutional Rights. Founded in 1966 by folks like Arthur Kinoy and William Kunstler dedicated to “advancing and protecting the rights guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights,” CCR commits itself to the “creative use of law as a positive force for social change.” That’s all well and good, but how does anyone with such a lofty mission keep on top of everything going on right now?

I sat down with CCR’s Executive Director Vince Warren to discuss what the organization is up to and what it’s like to work in the public interest in the age of Trump.

Warren’s strategic vision for CCR boils down to answering three questions:

1) What bad things are going to happen?
2) What communities will be affected the most by those actions?
3) How do we, as lawyers, interpose ourselves to help those communities?

As it turns out, answering these questions under this administration puts CCR into uncharted territory. In the aftermath of 9/11, when CCR was first on the scene representing Gitmo detainees or during the Obama administration when CCR challenged drone policies, it was relatively easy. As Warren put it, the organization historically takes cases that others don’t because they’re politically risky. But in the Trump era, with a new abuse every day and a fired up legal community champing at the bit to take the administration to court, Warren finds that the easier questions one and two have become to answer, the more careful, strategic thinking is required to properly answer question three.

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CCR Executive Director Vincent Warren

Trump’s inspired everyone — hundreds of firms got involved in one capacity or another — to get into the space. CCR had plans to challenge the Muslim Ban on its face before they witnessed the outpouring of legal action. At that point, Warren explained, a blanket challenge ceased to be the best way for CCR to help. Instead, CCR sought out fights that weren’t drawing as much attention, like working with the Kathryn O. Greenberg Immigration Justice Clinic at Cardozo to file a complaint with the Inspector General for Homeland Security over abuses to people caught up in the ban and “denied access to lawyers, held in detention for hours without food, and were in some instances coerced into signing away their entry visas.” It’s all about finding the best use of resources for CCR and the best way to interpose themselves is often carving out that space that no one — or at least very few lawyers — are already in. As Warren put it, “it’s raining tactical problems” and the challenge is keeping a coherent strategic vision.

That’s why CCR eschews any particular substantive wheelhouse. Staying adaptive requires keeping true to a community focus rather than donning blinders and locking into one area of the law. In fact, CCR doesn’t even limit itself by thinking of legal challenges as an end as opposed to a means. As Warren put it, CCR’s approach is to “think like lawyers and act like activists.” Among the many projects CCR pursues, are legal challenges designed to aid more narrowly focused activist groups, like fighting FOIA battles to get ICE training materials to help people understand ICE’s policies and what to expect from its raids and building a network of partnerships to help private firms partner with work centers to ensure workers don’t fall through the cracks by not having a lawyer ready to help them after a raid.

Decades after CCR came into being to help, primarily, African-American sharecroppers in the civil rights era, the organization approaches the future with the same community focus that marked its beginnings. The constitutional abuses may have changed (or, sadly, they may not have changed as much as one would hope), but these lawyers in the public interest remain committed to putting themselves between vulnerable communities and harm.

As Sheriff Joe skips out on justice, it’s worth remembering justice takes never-ending punches in the face, but there’s a lot of time left in the fight if lawyers keep a clear head and stick to the strategy.

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HeadshotJoe Patrice is an editor at Above the Law and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer. Feel free to email any tips, questions, or comments. Follow him on Twitter if you’re interested in law, politics, and a healthy dose of college sports news.

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