Project Leadership
Mary Marshall Clark, Director
Corie Trancho-Robie, Assistant Director
Elizabeth C. Grefrath, Project Coordinator
Myron A. Farber, Interviewer
Ronald J. Grele, Interviewer
Lance Thurner, Interviewer
About the Project
In September 2008, the Columbia Center for Oral History (CCOH) received funding to begin a small oral history project that would investigate the state of human and civil rights in the post-9/11 United States. This funding allowed for the development of the Rule of Law Oral History Project, a pilot project that documents legal challenges brought against the death penalty in the United States and the use of Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, as an indefinite detention center.
Early in the project design process, we discovered that there were many rich intersections in the lives and interests of lawyers and advocates working through death penalty litigation and the legal architecture of Guantánamo Bay Detention Center. Working with the Center for Constitutional Rights, a non-profit organization dedicated to advancing the rights guaranteed by the United States Constitution and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, CCOH conducted seven interviews with the lead counsel of the Supreme Court cases challenging the legal framework around the Guantanamo Bay Detention Center. CCOH also conducted five interviews with defense lawyers and advocates against the death penalty. A selection of the open interviews is available on this website. Altogether, the interviews amount to nearly 60 hours.
In the histories and narratives gathered by the Rule of Law Oral History Project, the intellectual and legal connection between these different arenas of work concerns the degradation of the right of habeas corpus and the fundamental lack of due process rights available to prisoners in United States jails and military prisons. Other major historical themes documented in our collection of interviews include perspectives on the legal, political and social histories of civil and human rights; the rights of individuals to protection from abuse; the personal experiences of individuals, families, and advocates in conflict with criminal or military justice system; and the legal, political and moral responses of individuals and movements that fight to preserve the rule of law in the contemporary United States.
Funding for the interviews of the Rule of Law Oral History Project was generously provided by the Atlantic Philanthropies.
The Interviewees
Anthony G. Amsterdam
University Professor, New York University School of Law
An interview of Anthony G. Amsterdam conducted April 1, 2, 8 and 9, 2009, in New York, New York, by Myron A. Farber for the Columbia Center for Oral History, Rule of Law Oral History Project.
Anthony G. Amsterdam is a leading American law teacher, advocate and scholar. His extensive pro bono practice has served a wide variety of civil rights, legal aid and public defender organizations and Amsterdam has litigated on cases ranging from death penalty defense to claims of access to the courts of the detainees at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Highlights of this interview include Amsterdam’s discussions of his childhood, early adulthood, and interest in civil rights; his career at the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund (LDF); his role in achieving the 1967-1977 death penalty “moratorium” in the United States; and his lifelong active and behind-the-scenes work leading and shaping litigation against the racially discriminatory implementation of the death penalty in the United States.
Stephen B. Bright
President and Senior Counsel, The Southern Center for Human Rights
An interview of Stephen B. Bright conducted May 24 and 26, 2009, in Atlanta, Georgia, by Myron A. Farber for the Columbia Center for Oral History, Rule of Law Oral History Project.
Stephen B. Bright is president and senior counsel of the Southern Center for Human Rights, a human rights organization that provides legal representation to people facing the death penalty, challenges violations of prisoner’s human rights, and advocates for criminal justice system reform. Bright’s litigation, teaching and writing include capital punishment, legal representation for poor people accused of crimes, conditions and practices in prisons and jails, racial discrimination in the criminal justice system, jury composition, judicial independence, and sentencing. Highlights of this interview include Bright’s discussions of his early public defense career in Appalachia and Washington D.C.; his work in reviving and growing the Southern Center for Human Rights; and the historical and contemporary challenges of ending the death penalty in the southern United States, including judicial and public prosecutor elections, under-resourced public defender systems, and fundamental lack of due process rights.
Richard H. Burr
Private Practice and Federal Death Penalty Resource Counsel
An interview of Richard H. Burr conducted December 10 and 11, 2008, in Leggett, Texas, by Myron A. Farber for the Columbia Center for Oral History, Rule of Law Oral History Project.
Richard H. Burr has devoted his practice entirely to death penalty defense work since 1979. Burr’s litigation focus includes state and federal capital defense litigation, post-conviction and appeals, federal habeas corpus, mitigation, life history and mental health evidence, and defendant competency. Highlights of this interview include Burr’s discussion of his career spanning his experiences at the Southern Prisoners Defense Committee, the West Palm Beach Public Defender’s Office, the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, the Texas Resource Center and his private practice; the methods and practices he uses to do capital defense work on both state and federal levels; his role as Timothy McVeigh’s lawyer; and his shaping and using defense-initiated victim outreach to serve surviving victims and families.
Clive Stafford Smith
Founder and Director, Reprieve
An interview of Clive Stafford Smith conducted June 28, 29 and 30, 2010, in Dorset, England, by Ronald J. Grele for the Columbia Center for Oral History, Rule of Law Oral History Project.
Clive Stafford Smith is the Founder and Director of Reprieve, an organization that uses the law to enforce the human rights of prisoners, from death row to Guantanamo Bay. Stafford Smith has represented over 300 prisoners facing the death penalty in the southern United States and has helped secure the release of 65 prisoners from Guantánamo Bay (and still works on behalf of 15 more). Highlights of this interview include Stafford Smith’s discussion of his career spanning from more than twenty years working on death penalty, civil rights, and indigent defense issues at the Southern Center for Human Rights and the Louisiana Crises Assistance Center; being one of three lawyers who first sued and won access to prisoners at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba in the U.S. Supreme Court case Rasul/Al Odah v. Bush (2004); and undertaking the discovery of the identities of unknown prisoners at Guantanamo Bay, Bagram and Diego Garcia and other secret detention sites.
P. Sabin Willett
Partner, Bingham McCutchen LLP
An interview of P. Sabin Willett conducted June 25, 2009 and May 3, 2010, in Boston, Massachusetts, by Ronald J. Grele for the Columbia Center for Oral History, Rule of Law Oral History Project.
P. Sabin Willett is a Partner at the law firm of Bingham McCutchen. He concentrates his practice in commercial and bankruptcy litigation. Since 2005, he has also been active in Bingham McCuthchen’s work attempting to restore the rule of law at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Willett’s team won the first review of a Guantanamo prisoner’s case under the Detainee Treatment Act in 2008 and obtained the first-ever merits review of Guantanamo habeas cases in the United States District Court for the District of Columbia. Highlights of this interview include Willett’s discussions of his first awareness of violations of the Geneva Conventions at Guantanamo Bay; decision to provide pro bono legal representation to the Uighurs at Guantanamo Bay; and his role in resettling four of his Uighur clients in Bermuda.
Thomas B. Wilner
Of Counsel, Shearman & Sterling
An interview of Thomas B. Wilner conducted February 4, 24 and March 24, 2009 in Washington, D.C., by Ronald J. Grele for the Columbia Center for Oral History, Rule of Law Oral History Project.
Thomas B. Wilner is currently head of International Trade and Government Relationship at the law firm of Shearman & Sterling. Prior to taking up work on Guantanamo cases, he did not work extensively in civil or human rights law – he was inspired by what he saw as an “excess” response to 9/11. In early 2002, he received a call from a group of Kuwaiti families asking him to help them find their children, who they thought might be in U.S. custody. He agreed, and his background in working with the U.S. government proved extraordinarily useful in the U.S. Supreme Court cases of Rasul/Al Odah v. Bush (2004) and Boumediene v. Bush (2008). Highlights of this interview include Wilner’s discussion of the evolution of legal arguments made in the U.S. Supreme Court cases; personal relationships with his clients and their families; and vivid sensory description of the conditions of the Guantanamo Bay prison camp.