Rule Of Law

THE ONE sure outcome of the impeachment trial is that the rule of law has been diminished as much by Republicans as by Democrats. And, to the chagrin of many of his constituents, House Judiciary Chairman Henry Hyde has become its chief detractor.According to a recent Chicago Tribune poll of Mr. Hyde's conservative Illinois district, 35 percent of the respondents said their opinion of the congressman had dropped because of his handling of the impeachment proceedings.In his opening statement to the Senate, Mr. Hyde cited the case of Sir Thomas More, a former lord chancellor who was executed in 1535 for refusing to swear an oath that the king of England was supreme over the pope.

When a federal jury in New York found terrorism suspect Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani guilty Wednesday on just one of the more than 280 charges of conspiracy and murder, it was to be expected that critics would leap to condemn the verdict as proof the Obama administration was wrong to insist on trying terrorism suspects in civilian courts rather than before military tribunals. In fact, however, the jurors' decision proved just the opposite: that despite the many obstacles the government had to overcome in getting evidence of Mr. Ghailani's crimes before the jury, the defendant was still convicted and now faces a sentence of 20 years to life in prison.

BEIJING -- One of the most exciting developments in China is the rising awareness at the grass-roots level that ordinary people have legal rights. Chinese law has long been used as a tool to help the Communist Party control the people; call it rule by law, not rule of law. But the country's staggering pace of growth has spawned all kinds of injustices, including a huge gap between rich and poor fueled by government corruption. The population is looking for redress. A few years ago, ordinary Chinese would have suffered in silence, afraid to raise their voices.

My step-son has been in line for several years to obtain his green card. The way things are going, however, I should have advised him to go to Mexico and swim across the Rio Grande to the U.S. Greeting him must be President Barack Obama, holding out a citizenship card, a passport, free health insurance, a Social Security check, a plane ticket to Baltimore and, if he's lucky, a bottle of Gatorade. I'm all in favor of immigration: legal immigration. If it were not for the process of legal immigration, I wouldn't be here to write this letter, and I wouldn't be married to a naturalized U.S. citizen from Shanghai.

The following are excerpts from a speech Monday in Washington by former Vice President Al Gore that was sponsored by the Liberty Coalition and the American Constitution Society for Law and Policy. The executive branch of our government has been caught eavesdropping on huge numbers of American citizens and has brazenly declared that it has the unilateral right to continue without regard to the established law enacted by Congress to prevent such abuses. It is imperative that respect for the rule of law be restored.

ARCHITECTS CRAFTING the framework for peace in war-weary Afghanistan must be alert to models that have worked reasonably well elsewhere. While circumstances vary and analogies rarely serve as clear guides to action, the process of reconstructing (or constructing) a nation, whose populace has for more than two decades been subjected to violence and war, can benefit from successful efforts in other crisis zones. The dramatic psychological lift brought about by the routing of the Taliban must be quickly built upon so the perception of progress is not lost.

GUNMEN who invaded the village of Acteal in southern Mexico and murdered 45 Tzotzil Indians last Monday, wounded the hopes for democracy and rule of law in Mexico. The reform administration of President Ernesto Zedillo is back to Square One in attempts to restore the credibility of Mexican institutions.There has been corruption of police and the army in fighting narco-terrorism, political murders at the highest level, stolen elections, a currency crisis impoverishing millions and now this.

ELMHURST, Ill. -- Rep. Henry J. Hyde sat Buddha-like at the local Elks Club as his -admirers in the Elmhurst Republican Women's Club gingerly approached to offer encouragement: "Good luck, Henry," they said, or "We're praying for you," or "You've got a big job ahead of you."But sitting quietly at a table with surprisingly few other guests, Hyde seemed more weary than confident -- almost as if he already knew, on that Thursday night before the election, that his life was about to go from difficult to nightmarish.

The rule of law and sanctity of constitutional institutions are more important than who wins. Q. When is a public record not a public record? A. When the Maryland judiciary finds it inconvenient. Larry Young could do for the NAACP what he did for the Maryland Senate. If the American people are not able to cull the deer herd with guns, we'll just have to do it with cars.

The acquittal of Rodney Peairs in the manslaughter of Yoshihiro Hattori removes the U.S. from the short list of countries that enjoy the rule of law.The next time Bill brings an entire airport to a halt while he gets a haircut on the runway, it ought to be at National.The West has reinvented the Indian reservation, this time for Bosnian Muslims.NAFTA is going to be good for drug smugglers -- and no one thought of that before.

M aryland's General Assembly is being justly criticized for considering holding at least $500,000 hostage to demands for information about clients of the University of Maryland School of Law's environmental clinic. This is in response to a clinic lawsuit, alleging pollution of Chesapeake Bay, filed on behalf of the Assateague Coastal Trust and the Waterkeeper Alliance. One of the defendants is Perdue Farms. Most of the criticism of these budgetary restrictions has contended that they would undermine both the ethically mandated independence of the clinic's lawyer-teacher and students and academic freedom.

America is at a turning point. How we will come to terms with the government abuses unleashed in the aftermath of 9/11 is a historic test of our highest principles. Are we a nation of laws? Will we stand by our commitment to the rule of law over the tyranny of state-sanctioned brutality? Maryland's particularly powerful congressional delegation in Washington can be pivotal as the nation chooses how to proceed. And, of course, members of Congress will more likely rise to the occasion if they hear from the public they represent.

Last week, the Obama administration released a series of memos describing the "harsh interrogation" of suspects authorized by Bush administration officials. For the uninitiated, I would note that "torture" of suspects would be a more accurate characterization. But to quote the president, "It is our intention to assure those who carried out their duties relying in good faith upon legal advice ... that they will not be subject to prosecution." The use of torture is despicable. The U.S. should never have descended to the point where we would use tactics normally associated with totalitarian regimes, thus besmirching the country, the Constitution and the rule of law. But as with all crimes against humanity, it is the leaders, those who authorized the torture, who are the main offenders, and really need to be held accountable and brought to justice.

A federal appeals court panel this week threw a monkey wrench into efforts to free 17 Chinese dissidents detained as terrorist suspects after the U.S. toppled Afghanistan's Taliban government in 2001. President Barack Obama, who has pledged to close the U.S. detention facility in Guantanamo, should use this case to repudiate the Bush policy of indefinite detention without charge and order their release. The suspects are ethnic Uighurs (pronounced "WEE-gurz") from western China who had fled to Afghanistan fearing persecution for their separatist views.

On June 4, 2003, as Liberian President Charles Taylor walked up the steps for the opening ceremony of the Accra Peace Accords in Ghana, I stood in front of the world's press and announced that I had unsealed an indictment charging him with 17 counts of war crimes and crimes against humanity. The international community reacted with praise - and condemnation. Politicians and diplomats voiced concern that my announcement had jeopardized the newly organized peace process and hopes for stability in West Africa.

This column has to begin with me making a sincere, heartfelt apology to the members of the Baltimore County Bar Association. I was to speak on the topic "The Rule of Law" at the association's Law Day breakfast Thursday morning, but I didn't make it. I could offer an excuse, but I remember what Staff Sgt. Wallace Tidwell told me about excuses more than 34 years ago when I entered Air Force boot camp in San Antonio. The fact is, I just blew it. Usually, I let my wife know about my speaking engagements so that when the date approaches she can jog the old memory for me. But this time around, I passed on bothering the wife and decided I'd remember myself for a change.

WASHINGTON -- The integrity of our government of laws -- not men -- depends on our fidelity to the basic principle that society holds each of its members accountable to the rule of law. Similarly, when the House impeached President Clinton for his alleged perjury and obstruction of justice, Congress was demonstrating that it would not tolerate conduct in our president that would not be acceptable were it committed by other citizens.The House, in performing its constitutional accusatory function, without regard to whether the Senate would likely convict, reaffirmed that a president will be held accountable to the rule of law. And it informed future presidents that obstruction of justice and perjury may lead to removal.

FOR MANY around the world, the detention facility at the U.S. Naval Base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, has become one of the most prominent, negative symbols of America's departure from the rule of law since 9/11. Camp Delta, as the prison on Guantanamo is called, holds more than 520 men from about 40 countries. Many of these people have been detained there for more than three years; none has been given any indication of when, or even if, he will be released. The U.S. government has classified all of the detainees as "enemy combatants."

Former Baltimore police Commissioner Kevin Clark was fired on Nov. 10, 2004, when then-Mayor Martin O'Malley said that domestic violence allegations against Clark, while unsubstantiated, "distracted" the imported New Yorker from effectively doing his job. I knew more than a year before that Clark wasn't long for the job. It was when he attended a fellowship meeting at the Union Baptist Church coffeehouse. A man questioned Clark about Baltimore's "investment" in black youth. "The only investment y'all made in 'em is that jail down there," the man all but snarled.