CCR Annual Report 2005 - Center for Constitutional Rights

Albert Ruben
Donor
Claire Tixeire
Intern
Eric Lewis
Volunteer Attorney
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Albert Ruben knew something was wrong when his high school classmate George Kagawara
disappeared in the days after Pearl Harbor. His childhood friend’s internment planted a seed
of suspicion of authority in Mr. Ruben’s mind. Over the years as a reporter and screen writer,
his distrust of government authority has grown, and supporting CCR has been one of his
many avenues of challenging the government’s unjust practices.
A longtime friend of CCR founder Morton Stavis, Albert Ruben has been unwavering in his
support of CCR. “CCR clearly looks authority in the eye and dares it to put up its dukes. By
ourselves, not many among us are able to do that. We need representatives, people willing
to say to hell with the odds. So we turn, as I gratefully did, to skilled, hard-nosed battlers.”
Claire Tixeire was a Human Rights intern at CCR this past year and spent most of her time
on the war crimes case we filed against Rumsfeld, Sanchez, Gonzales and other high-ranking
civil and military officials under Germany’s universal jurisdiction laws.
Claire is a French graduate law student from the Pantheon-Sorbonne University in Paris.
She also has a Diploma in English and International Law from the University of Kent at
Canterbury in England and an L.L.M. in International Law from the University of Quebec in
Montreal, specializing in international criminal and humanitarian law. She is currently back in
Paris completing a postgraduate masters in human rights and hopes to rejoin CCR in the fall.
“The work of the Center for Constitutional Rights is the most passionate and exciting work I
know of in the field of human rights. I can hardly describe how amazingly enriching, at all
levels, it was for me to spend 10 months there.”
Eric Lewis has been unwavering in his support of due process and has steadfastly opposed
the abusive treatment of detainees at the Guantánamo Bay prison camp. With CCR, Eric
filed the landmark Rasul v. Rumsfeld case, which was the first case to seek damages for
released Guantánamo detainees.
“With the ‘new paradigm’ has come an alarming erosion of the rule of law. It is incumbent
on the legal profession to partner with CCR and other organizations to make sure that the
Constitution does not join the Geneva Conventions as ‘quaint and outmoded’ in fighting the
global war on terror. Some day Guantánamo will be seen like the Japanese-American
internment camps of Korematsu— as a mistaken and panicked response that was corrosive
of our national ideals. I look forward to working with CCR to try to make that happen in
real time.”