Ratner "will be most remembered for filing Rasul v. Bush, the first lawsuit challenging President Bush's wartime detentions."[2] He was co-counsel in representing the Guantanamo Bay detainees in the United States Supreme Court, which ruled for the detainees' right to test the legality of their detentions in US courts, saying that the Guantanamo base was effectively an extension of US territory and covered by US law.[3]
Ratner was a president of the National Lawyers Guild (NLG) and the author of numerous books and articles, including the books The Trial of Donald Rumsfeld: A Prosecution by Book, Against War with Iraq, and Guantanamo: What the World Should Know, as well as a textbook on international human rights. Ratner was the co-host of the radio program, Law and Disorder. He and three other attorneys hosted a Pacifica Radio show that reported legal developments related to civil liberties, civil rights, and human rights.[citation needed]
In June 2013, Ratner and numerous other celebrities appeared in a video supporting Chelsea Manning, who was facing court-martial for disclosing files to WikiLeaks that included evidence of war crimes in Iraq.[5][6]
In May 2014, Michael Ratner submitted his resignation from the advisory board of the International Center for Ethics, Justice and Public Life at Brandeis, due to the university's president cutting ties with Al Quds, a Palestinian University, after a student demonstration there. Ratner declared his support for Al Quds' President, Dr Nusseibeh, and his promotion of "mutual respect, peaceful coexistence and the exchange of ideas" with Israelis.[7]
Civil liberties and human rights counsel
Shortly after the US government began to detain prisoners at the Guantanamo Bay Naval Base in Cuba in 2002 during the so-called War on Terror, claiming they were beyond the reach of United States law as being "offshore" and military prisoners, Ratner was co-counsel with other attorneys and the CCR in a landmark case challenging the Bush position in court. They filed habeas corpus petitions on behalf of British men Shafik Rasul and Asif Iqbal, and Australians David Hicks and Mamdouh Habib, saying it was unlawful to hold the men indefinitely without determining their status. They lost in the lower courts, but in November 2003, the US Supreme Court agreed to hear the case. These men were being held with no charges being brought against them. The administration had said US courts had no jurisdiction over them, but the Supreme Court disagreed, ruling in Rasul v. Bush (2004) that the detainees had habeas corpus rights as Guantanamo base was effectively an extension of US territory.[8][better source needed]
This meant the detainees could be represented by counsel, and the CCR was among the groups that worked to obtain legal representation for each of the men. This led to hundreds of men being released after court challenges.[9]
In 2007, Ratner filed a complaint in the courts of France requesting the criminal prosecution of US Secretary of DefenseDonald Rumsfeld and other US officials for the abuse and torture of prisoners at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq.[10]
Ratner served as a special counsel to Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, assisting in the prosecution of human rights crimes.[11]
In September 2021, The New York Review of Books published an essay[13] by Yale Law School professor and historian Samuel Moyn adapted by the author from his book Humane: How the United States Abandoned Peace and Reinvented War (2021).[14] Tragically, writes Moyn, Ratner's career is a case history of how U.S. humanitarians ended up sanitizing the war on terror instead of opposing it. "By legalizing the manner of the conflict," Moyn asserts, "Ratner paradoxically laundered the inhumanity from what began as a brutal enterprise by helping to recodify a war that thus became endless, legal, and humane."[13]
One week later, The New York Review of Books published a rebuttal by Kenneth Roth, executive director of Human Rights Watch, who objected that "Reducing Ratner's lifework to an effort to sanitize war and therefore unwittingly enable its continuation is not only a betrayal of his memory; it is also a misplaced attack on the decades of efforts of the human rights movement to curb the barbarity of war and protect civilians caught in its midst.".[15] Another essay, by Ratner's colleagues Joseph Margulies and Baher Azmy, terms Moyn's essay "fantastically wrong", charging it with fundamentally misrepresenting Ratner's activities and views, as well as the broader consequences of his litigation.[16]
Personal life and death
Ratner was born into a large Jewish family of immigrants which had fled antisemitism in Poland.[17] Both of his parents, Harry Ratner and Ann Spott, spoke Yiddish at home and were religiously observant, while Ratner was not.[18]
Ratner was married to Karen Ranucci.[19] He died on May 11, 2016. According to The New York Times, citing his brother, Bruce Ratner, the cause of death was complications from cancer.[1] Ratner was ex-husband of lawyer Margaret Ratner Kunstler.
Recognition and board appointments
2009, Courage of Conviction Award on behalf of the University of Iowa Center for Human Rights
2008, William J. Butler Human Rights Medal from the Urban Morgan Institute for Human Rights at the University of Cincinnati College of Law for leadership on behalf of the Center for Constitutional Rights for the defense of prisoners on Guantanamo.
2006, Lennon Ono Peace Grant from Yoko Ono on behalf of the Center for Constitutional Rights
2006, Winner of the Letelier-Moffit award from the Institute for Policy Studies on behalf of the Center for Constitutional Rights and the NYC Jobs with Justice award.
2006, Hans Litten Prize, named after a famous anti-fascist lawyer who was tortured to death by the Nazis. Awarded in Berlin
2005, The Columbia Law School Public Interest Law Foundation Award, and the Columbia Law School Medal of Honor
1996, International Human Rights Litigation in U.S. Courts (with Beth Stephens), Transnational Publishers, ISBN 0-941320-95-2
1997, Che Guevara and the FBI: U.S. Political Police Dossier on the Latin American Revolutionary, Ocean Press, ISBN 1-875284-76-1
2000, The Pinochet Papers: The Case of Augusto Pinochet in Spain and Britain (with Brody), Kluwer Law International, ISBN 9041114041
2003, Against War with Iraq: An Anti-War Primer (with Jennie Green and Barbara Olshansky), Open Media, ISBN 1-58322-591-9
2004, Guantanamo: What the World Should Know (with Ellen Ray), Chelsea Green Publishing Company, ISBN 1-931498-64-4
2008, International Human Rights Litigation in U.S. Courts with Beth Stephens, Judith Chomsky, Jennifer Green, Paul Hoffman, ISBN 978-1-57105-353-4
2008, The Prosecution of Donald Rumsfeld: A Prosecution by Book ISBN 1-59558-341-6
2011, Hell No: Your Right to Dissent in 21st-Century America (with Margaret Ratner Kunstler), The New Press, ISBN 1-595585-40-0
2021, Moving the Bar: My Life as a Radical Lawyer, OR Books, ISBN 978-1-68219-309-9
Book chapters
2004, America's Disappeared: Secret Imprisonment, Detainees, and the "War on Terror" (with Barbara Olshansky and Rachel Meeropol), ISBN 1-58322-645-1
2006 "Civil Remedies for Gross Human Rights Violations" Human Rights in the World Community: Issues And Action (edited by Richard Pierre Claude & Burns H. Weston) University of Pennsylvania Press, ISBN 0812281632
2003 "The War on Terrorism: Guantanamo Prisoners, Military Commissions and Torture" in Lost Liberties: Ashcroft and the Assault on Personal Freedom (edited by Cynthia Brown), The New Press, ISBN 1565848292
"International Law" (with Jules Lobel) Power Trip: U.S. Unilateralism and Global Strategy After September 11 (edited by John Feffer), Seven Stories Press, 2003, ISBN 158322579X
Articles
1988 "Freedom at Risk; It's a Free Country: Secrecy, Censorship, and Repression in the 1980s" (edited by Richard O. Curry), Temple University Press
1998 "How We Closed the Guantanamo HIV Camp: The Intersection of Politics and Litigation"
1999 "Bypassing the Security Council: Ambiguous Authorizations to Use Force, Cease Fires, and the Iraqi Inspection Regime, (with Lobel)
2003 "Lost Liberties: Ashcroft and the Assault on Personal Freedom" (edited by Cynthia Brown), The New Press
2008 "The Lawyer's Story" in The Coroma Textile Recovery Story
2007 "Guantanamo: Five Years and Counting" (with Sara Miles) Salon.com
2007 "War Criminals "Is Waterboarding Torture? Ask the Prisoners" Salon.com November 6, 2007
2007 "Above the Law" (with Sara Miles), Salon.com, March 31, 2007
2006 "Keep the Great Writ Alive" (with Sara Miles) Salon.com, September 26, 2006
2005 "Wrong About Rights" (with Sara Miles) Salon.com, November 10, 2005
References
^ a b"Michael Ratner, Lawyer Who Won Rights for Guantánamo Prisoners, Dies at 72". The New York Times. 12 May 2016.
^David Cole, "Michael Ratner’s Army: The Fight Against Guantánamo", NYR Daily, 15 May 2016
^"Remembering Michael Ratner, Pioneering Lawyer Who Fought for Justice from Attica to Guantánamo", Democracy Now!, 12 May 2016.
^Lartey, Jamiles (2016-05-11). "Michael Ratner, attorney for WikiLeaks and Julian Assange, dies at 72". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved 2023-04-23.
^"Celeb video: 'I am Bradley Manning'". POLITICO. 19 June 2013.
^I am Bradley Manning (full HD). 18 June 2013. Archived from the original on 2021-12-12 – via YouTube.
^Michael Ratner (28 May 2014). "Brandeis Shouldn't Cut Ties to Palestinian University". The Forward.
^Brian Duignan, "Rasul v. Bush", Encyclopædia Britannica, 2016
^"Historic case: 'Rasul v. Bush'", Center for Constitutional Rights website
^Paul, James. "Rumsfeld Charged with Torture in French Court". Global Policy.
^ a bBrittain, Victoria (2016-05-12). "Michael Ratner obituary". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved 2023-04-23.
^Ben Norton (12 May 2016). ""Tomorrow we carry on his work": Journalists, activists mourn death of human rights lawyer Michael Ratner". Salon.
^ a bMoyn, Samuel (September 1, 2021). "Michael Ratner's Tragedy, and Ours". The New York Review of Books. Retrieved September 10, 2021.
^"Humane: How the United States Abandoned Peace and Reinvented War". Macmillan Publishers. Retrieved September 10, 2021.
^Roth, Kenneth (September 8, 2021). "Litigating the War on Terror: An Exchange". The New York Review of Books. Retrieved September 10, 2021.
^Margulies, Joseph and Azmy, Baher (September 13, 2021). "The Humanity of Michael Ratner, The Fabrications of Samuel Moyn". Just Security. Retrieved September 13, 2021.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
^Michael Steven Smith (25 Apr 2019). Lawyers for the Left: In the Courts, On the Streets, and On the Air.
^"From a Zionist Youth to Outspoken Critic of a Jewish State – Michael Ratner on RAI Pt 2/7". the Analysis.news. 4 March 2014.
^Ratner, Lizzy (May 18, 2016). "Michael Ratner Was a Fearless Warrior for Justice—He Was Also My Beloved Uncle". The Nation. Retrieved 2022-05-16. {{cite magazine}}: Cite magazine requires |magazine= (help)
^Puffin/Nation Prize for Creative Citizenship Archived 2010-07-10 at the Wayback Machine, official website.
External links
Wikimedia Commons has media related to Michael Ratner.
Michael Ratner at IMDb
"Who Killed Che?" - Guernica: A Magazine of Art and Politics (October 15, 2011)
HumanRightsNow.org - 'Human Rights Lawyer Michael Ratner' (home page)
Lannan Podcasts: Michael Ratner with mary-Charlotte Domandi
The Autonomist - Michael Ratner and CCR: Fighting Against the War on Terror
DemocracyNow.org - 'Michael Ratner: Gonzales "Has His Hand Deep in the Blood of the Conspiracy Of Torture"', Democracy Now! (January 28, 2005)
WashingtonPost.com[dead link] - 'Statutes of Liberty: Michael Ratner Is In Hot Pursuit Of Justice for Guantanamo Detainees', Lynne Duke, Washington Post (December 19, 2003)