Rights at Risk

More than 200 years ago, Benjamin Franklin wrote, “Those who would give up essential Liberty to purchase a little temporary Safety deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.” David K. Shipler’s new book, Rights at Risk, suggests Franklin’s warning may have been realized.

Shipler calls this book the “second volume” of a study of civil liberties that began with “The Rights of the People,” which concentrated on the erosion of the Fourth Amendment after 9/11. “Rights at Risk” expands on this, examining pervasive violations in the criminal, judicial, and immigration systems, and the effect this has had on America’s constitutional democracy.

Shipler begins with a comparison of police abuse of black prisoners in Chicago with the abuse of Muslim prisoners by the Central Intelligence Agency. With this parallel, he shows how a climate of fear creates the rationale in which otherwise civic-minded Americans go along with the violations of the rights of “others.”

Once we ascribe threat to groups, they exist in a state of exception and our civic commitments no longer apply.

From here, Shipler describes false confessions, coercive plea bargains, the denial of legal counsel, and the lack of constitutional protections for foreigners in immigration court. In addition to following well-known terrorism cases, like those of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, John Walker Lindh, and Jose Padilla, Shipler details little known criminal and immigration cases, where rights are squashed during ordinary procedure and enforcement. One woman received a life sentence despite the fact that her lawyer had a blatant conflict of interest. A man has been on death row since 1986, when his lawyer hired a vision-impaired firearms expert who did not know how to operate the microscope needed to examine the evidence. An Iraqi refugee was jailed for failing to be registered and fingerprinted; he learned that he wasn’t required to do so from his immigration detention inmates, who knew the law better than the border agents or the government’s attorney.

In confronting so many examples of civil liberties violations, the reader is forced to consider the moral perspective of those whose rights have been compromised. This leads to the question: if we’re a rights-loving republic, why are we letting people be treated this way? As Shipler demonstrates, in times of threat, we suffer a breakdown in political empathy. By making groups threatening, we isolate them, and if their rights are diminished, it’s no concern of ours. Because fear reprioritizes our commitments and security supplants rights.

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