You can’t make up bad decisions like this. Note that this is a 6-3 decision, not a close one:
The law barring material support was first adopted in 1996 and strengthened by the USA Patriot Act adopted by Congress right after the September 11 attacks. It was amended again in 2004.
The law bars knowingly providing any service, training, expert advice or assistance to any foreign organization designated by the U.S. State Department as terrorist.
The law, which carries a penalty of up to 15 years in prison, does not require any proof the defendant intended to further any act of terrorism or violence by the foreign group.
Nor does it require any proof that the organization is a terrorist organization, since a State Department declaration is an administrative act.
The Humanitarian Law Project in Los Angeles had previously provided human rights advocacy training to the Kurdistan Workers Party, known as the PKK, and the main Kurdish political party in Turkey.
The Humanitarian Law group and others sued in an effort to renew support for what they described as lawful, nonviolent activities overseas.
“The Supreme Court has ruled that human rights advocates, providing training and assistance in the nonviolent resolution of disputes, can be prosecuted as terrorists,” said Georgetown University law professor David Cole, who argued the case.
“In the name of fighting terrorism, the court has said that the First Amendment permits Congress to make it a crime to work for peace and human rights. That is wrong,” Cole said.
Got that? Trying to help an organization do non violent things will get you locked up.
More to the point, as noted earlier, this is clearly a violation of the right of association and the right for free speech. You get locked up based on who you associate with, not what you’ve actually done, and the decision who you can associate with is a purely administrative act at the sole discretion of the President of the United States. Any organization the State Department declares a terrorist organization you cannot associate with, period.
This is of a piece with other policies which allow the President to assassinate an American citizen without a trial, to lock people up indefinitely without a trial and so on. When they President does deign to allow a trial evidence obtained from torture is admissable, and the if the President doesn’t want the accused to know who their accuser is or to see the evidence against them, so be it.
This is, I should emphasize, just a continuation of a trend, a punctuation mark by the Supreme Court in a long line of decisions which have gutted the first amendment, the right to face one’s accuser, the right to due process and so on. If I were to point to a very bad law that many folks supported who shouldn’t have it would be the RICO statutes, which likewise made simple association a crime. Since it was “bad people” doing the association (the Mafia) folks didn’t care.
Since it’s bad people, “terrorists”, this time, too many people won’t care.
But if the rights of those you despise aren’t protected, than neither are yours.
Laura
Thanks for this Ian. Apparently we are only allowed to wage peace with our friends. Such a dark, strange world we live in.
Tom Hickey
Another nail in the coffin of the American experiment. Not difficult to see where this is going.
Badtux
Not new. See, e.g., Dennis v. United States, 341 U.S. 494 (1951), where a number of people were sent to jail based on their association with the Communist Party USA, and the Supreme Court upheld their convictions. It appears that the U.S. Supreme Court upholds the Constitution only when it is politically expedient to do so.
– Badtux the Cynical Penguin
anonymous
OK, nothing new here, except: what made JP Stevens vote with the majority? I thought he was supposed to be one of the good ones.
anonymous
People more knowledgeable about the right-wing mind than I am may have been expecting this, but I was shocked when I heard this announced this morning.
For the people who are not shocked, how would you rewrite the Constitution to prevent this sort of ruling? (It was a rhetorical question. There is no way to write a constitution to prevent people from giving rulings that are in direct contradiction to the language.)
In a country of better people, this would provoke a few million to march on D.C. and surround the court until they were impeached. In the country that we have, I suspect that fewer than 10% know about the decision.
Cloud
When I get depressed about this, I recall to mind that most people below ‘Patrician’ rank throughout most of history were quite accustomed to not having any political power, or due process rights, and not being safe associating with even nonviolent opposition groups.
Not a great consolation, but it’s something.
anonymous
That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.
Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed.
But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.
It practically writes itself.
anonymous
For mordant amusement, here is the headline from the wsj:
“High Court Upholds Antiterror Law”
“Oh thank *god* for those Justices on the Court! They’re upholding the law against terror. We’re safe now!”
“Treasonous Court Denies Freedom of Speech and Freedom of Association to Citizens” just doesn’t have the same ring to it.
Cloud
“if the Pentagon pays off Sunni insurgents to keep the peace in Iraq … am I breaking the law if I pay my taxes?”
David H.
Following on what Mr. Tux said, it’s interesting, if infuriating & somewhat demoralizing, to note how repressive laws are customized & legitimated for the times in which they are imposed. Everyone knew the commies were bad, just as everyone now knows that ‘terrorists’ are bad. No need for further discussion.
Atcooper
Cloud,
I have found thinking of myself as a subject of the US rather than a citizen to be quite helpful digesting news such as this. If I am not a citizen, then I am not responsible for all this evil.
I can continue to stay informed, yes, and will talk with associates about the developments in the ruling class, and I am starting to learn how to talk like a socialist without using the vocabulary of the socialist, so I can contribute in my small way to the resistance. But I no longer feel culpable to a government I am a subject of.
There is much about the feudal mind I think I understand better. I will have to re-read my Chaucer someday soon.
Celsius 233
Blah, blah, blah!
Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have found out the exact measure of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them,and these will continue till they are resisted with either words or blows,or with both~Frederick Douglas
G. Robert Blakey
I was almost with you at the beginning. I’ve taught the law of terrorism for several years. On the whole it, deals with acts of incredible violence, not merely associating with “bad” people. Like, 9/11, when more people died than at Pearl Harbor. (At least the Japanese openly attacked military targets, and they flew planes with military marking on them showing who they were.) No so the terrorist suicide bombers who kill people at prayer. I was, as I said, almost with you until you said” If I were to point to a very bad law that many folks supported who shouldn’t have it would be the RICO statutes, which likewise made simple association a crime. Since it was “bad people” doing the association (the Mafia) folks didn’t care.” Well, my friend, you don’t know what you are talking about. I drafted RICO; it does not make association a crime. It makes participating in the affairs of an enterprise by committing a pattern of criminal conduct. We looked at the old Communist Party Cases. We designed RICO not to repeat Dennis, as one of your commenters mentioned. Study the fact before you open you mouth. Otherwise, keep it shut. Whereof you know nothing, speak nothing.
Pepe
OK, nothing new here, except: what made JP Stevens vote with the majority? I thought he was supposed to be one of the good ones.
Stevens denies being a liberal. He was a Republican appointee, who held mainstream Republican views (when he was appointed). Stevens says he only appears liberal because the other justices are so conservative.
Ian Welsh
Of course, I went a step too far in calling RICO about “simple association”. It does take more than that. Of course, in actual effect, after the way it’s been interpreted, it is dangerously close to “guilt by association”.
RICO is a disgraceful law which reduces the burden of evidence from “beyond a reasonable doubt” to “preponderance of evidence”. It allows an accused’s assets to be seized before any conviction is obtained, forcing them to rely on public defenders and effectively gutting their ability to get a fair trial, it requires no actual conviction of any of the underlying crimes and so on. RICO doesn’t even require knowledge that crimes were taking place. Under Salinas, the law has been interpreted so that even if a defendant didn’t agree to two of the underlying RICO acts, he or she can still be found guilty.
As for the current law, it would make Jimmy Carter advising Hezbollah (which has been designated a terrorist organization) illegal. It would make activists teaching Kurds how to file human rights complaints instead of killing people guilty, and so on.
RICO was part of a slippery slope. It is nowhere near as bad in terms of guilt by association as the current law, but by making it possible to charge people for crimes they did not personally commit, and which they did not agree to (Salinas), and even which they have sometimes been actually acquited for previously, it was certainly a step in the wrong direction. (And hey, double jeopardy.)
I note also the rhetorical trick of immediately jumping to 9/11, as if all organizations named terrorist organizations by executive fiat are al-Q’aeda. This is exactly the sort of thing I was talking about “let’s play up the worst of all possible people as the target for this law to justify it, because no one cares if al-Q’aeda’s rights are violated.”
I get that you wrote the bill, and as such you feel compelled to defend it. Certainly the way it has been interpreted and used over the years may (or may not) have been what you intended. Nonetheless, it’s a dangerous law. (It’s not even the potential for guilt by association I dislike most, it’s the pre-emptive seizure, the double jeopardy and the move away from “guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.”)
Formerly T-Bear
Save the comprehension Ian, the master, G. Robert Blakey has spoken and having done so, removes the ability of all others to comprehend and decide any question and therefore silence is demanded. It is a common (Duh)American trait, a part of the national exceptionalism, after all, this is what they think, there is nothing other possible. Once such behavior would be seen by adults as nothing more than playacting by junior high schoolers in the process of maturation. Sadly, the adults have disappeared from the public scene and all that is left are those who are stunted in their jejune levels of maturity, the above comment is a prime example of such retardation of development toward maturity. The sad part is there are so few adults still present in the public discourse to emulate, to be rôle models of adult behavior.
Gresham’s Law may apply to commentators as well.
Elliot
See also: police state, Fascist.
It is a breath of fresh air to see the reflexive reliance on 9/11 pointed out to be the refuge it has become. Thanks, Ian.
The pre-emptive seizure and double jeopardy have always bothered me too; created to prevent the accused having any recourse.
It is infuriating to think that avenues of peacemaking are now to be denied as giving aid to……. “bad people”.
I’m sorry for my country.