Storming the Court
How a Band of Yale Law Students Sued the President--and Won
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- $18.99
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- $18.99
Publisher Description
The David vs. Goliath story of the unflagging Yale Law School students who in 1992 fought the U.S. Government all the way to the Supreme Court.
In 1992, three hundred innocent Haitian men, women, and children who had qualified for political asylum in the United States were detained at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba—and told they might never be freed. Charismatic democracy activist Yvonne Pascal and her fellow refugees had no contact with the outside world, no lawyers, and no hope...until a group of inspired Yale Law School students vowed to free them.
Pitting the students and their untested professor Harold Koh against Kenneth Starr, the Justice Department, the Pentagon, and Presidents George H. W. Bush and Bill Clinton, this real-life legal thriller takes the reader from the halls of Yale and the federal courts of New York to the slums of Port-au-Prince and the windswept hills of Guantánamo Bay and ultimately to the U.S. Supreme Court. Written with grace and passion, Storming the Court captures the emotional highs and despairing lows of a legal education like no other—a high-stakes courtroom campaign against the White House in the name of the greatest of American values: freedom.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In 1992 a team of Yale law students and other human rights activists sought to enjoin the government from detaining Haitian refugees indefinitely at Guant namo Bay, without charges or access to counsel. Lawyer Goldstein tells their story with authority: he was a classmate of many of the student activists, although not a participant in the case. Two of the primary characters are Harold Koh, the dedicated, even driven, Yale professor who led the legal fight, and the courageous, pseudonymous "Yvonne Pascal," who emerged as a spokeswoman for the Haitian refugees. Goldstein's sympathies are wholeheartedly with the Haitians and those working on their behalf. A greater effort to articulate the government's argument would have improved the book and made the case's mixed outcome more understandable. After protracted litigation in federal court and the U.S. Supreme Court, the Haitians were discharged from Gitmo, but the policy questions involving the reach of the government's power were resolved in the government's favor. This is a timely (given the issue of detaining terror suspects today) and passionate account, but would have benefited from less hero worship of the activists and less demonizing of the government.
