Harvard’s Kangaroo Law School: The School for Torturers--Francis A. Boyle

Tweet Portion of article below. Click on first line to read the rest of Boyle's indictment of his law school. Linda

"Not surprisingly, the newly released January 2007 issue of the American Journal of Imperial Law--otherwise known as the self-styled American Journal of International Law but originally founded and still operated by U. S. State and War Departments’ apparatchiks and their professorial fellow-travelers--just published an article by Harvard Law School’s recently retired Bemis Professor of International Law Detlev Vagts (who only taught me the required course on Legal Accounting) arguing in favor of the Pentagon’s Kangaroo Courts System on Guantanamo despite the fact that they have been soundly condemned by every human rights organization and every human rights official and leader in the entire world as well as by the United States Supreme Court itself in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld (2006). I am not going to bother to recite here all the grievous deficiencies of the Gitmo Kangaroo Courts under International Law and U.S. Constitutional Law. But suffice it to say that the Gitmo Kangaroo Courts constitute war crimes under the Laws of War, the Four Geneva Conventions of 1949, and even the U. S. Army’s own Field Manual 27-10, The Law of Land Warfare (1956). Field Manual 27-10 (1956) was drafted for the Pentagon by my Laws of War teacher Richard R. Baxter, who was generally recognized as the world’s leading expert on that subject, which is precisely why I voluntarily chose to study International Law with him and his long-time collaborator Louis B. Sohn, and not with the bean-counter Vagts. For the entire post-World War II generation of international law students at Harvard Law School, Louis Sohn shall always be our real Bemis Professor of International Law and never the False Pretender to that Throne known as Detlev Vagts.

Since those student days I have personally appeared pro bono publico in five U.S. military courts-martial proceedings involving warfare that were organized in accordance with the Congress's Uniform Code of Military Justice (U.C.M.J.)--which still does not apply to the Gitmo Kangaroo Courts despite the ruling by the U. S. Supreme Court in Hamdan that the U.C.M.J. should be applied in Guantanamo--on behalf of five U. S. military personnel who each acted as matters of courage, integrity, principle, and conscience at great risk to their freedom:

1. U. S. Marine Corporal Jeff Paterson, the first U.S. military resister to President Bush Sr.'s genocidal war against Iraq;

2. Army Captain Doctor Yolanda Huet-Vaughn, the highest ranking U. S. commissioned officer to be court-martialed for refusing to participate in President Bush Sr.’s genocidal war against Iraq;

3. Captain Lawrence Rockwood, who was court-martialed by the U. S. Army for trying to stop torture in Haiti after the Clinton administration had illegally invaded that country in 1994;

4. Army Staff Sergeant Camilo Mejia, the first U. S. military resister to be court-martialed for refusing to participate in President Bush Jr.’s war of aggression against Iraq; and

5. Army First Lieutenant Ehren Watada, the first U. S. commissioned officer to be court-martialed for his refusal to participate in President Bush Jr.’s war of aggression against Iraq.

6. As I can attest from my direct personal involvement, each and every one of these five courts-martial under the U.C.M.J. were Stalinist show-trials produced and directed by the Pentagon that predictably and readily degenerated into travesties of justice. These five U.C.M.J. courts-martial involving warfare each proved correct the old adage attributed to Groucho Marx that military justice is to justice as military music is to music. By comparison, the Gitmo Kangaroo Courts will not even be run in accordance with the U.C.M.J. despite the fact that the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Hamdan that they should be.

Whenever they are up and running the Gitmo Courts will constitute Stalinist Show Trials as well as Kangaroo Courts, and their preliminary proceedings have already proven them to be Travesties of Justice. Even worse yet, fully-functioning Stalinist Gitmo Kangaroo Courts will quickly become conveyor-belts of death for alleged and already tortured terrorist suspects along the lines of the Texas execution chamber operated by George Bush Jr. when he was the “governor” of that state and tortured to death 152 victims by means of lethal injection. But today under the Four Geneva Conventions of 1949, executing persons detained as a result of armed conflict without a fair trial before a regularly constituted court constitutes a grave war crime. To be sure, under the First Amendment to the United States Constitution Professor Vagts has the freedom to advocate war crimes so long as he does not participate in their commission, or incite them, or aid and abet them. But precisely where is that line to be drawn for law professors?