Synopses & Reviews
A tale more riveting than fiction, "Storming the Court" is the true story of idealistic law students who challenged the United States government in a battle for freedom and human rights that went all the way to the Supreme Court -- and resonates today more than ever.
In 1992, three hundred innocent men, women, and children who had qualified for political asylum in the United States were forced into a detention camp at the American naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and told they might never be freed. "Storming the Court" takes readers inside this modern-day atrocity to tell the tale of Yvonne Pascal -- a young, charismatic activist -- and other Haitian refugees who had fled their violent homeland only to end up prisoners at Guantanamo. They had no lawyers, no contact with the outside world, and no hope...except for a band of students at Yale Law School fifteen hundred miles away.
Led by Harold Koh, a gifted but untested law professor, these remarkable twentysomethings waged a legal war against two U.S. presidents to defend the Constitution and the principles symbolized by the Statue of Liberty. It was an education in law unlike any other. With the refugees' lives at stake, the students threw aside classes and career plans to fight an army of government attorneys in a case so politically volatile that the White House itself intervened in the legal strategy.
Featuring a real-life cast that includes Kenneth Starr and other top Justice Department officials, U.S. marines, radical human-rights lawyers, and Presidents George H. W. Bush and Bill Clinton, "Storming the Court" follows the students from the classrooms at Yale to the prison camp at Guantanamo to the federal courts in New York and Washington as they struggle to save Yvonne Pascal and her fellow Haitian refugees.
At a time when the treatment of post-9/11 Guantanamo detainees has been challenged in the public arena and the courts, this book traces the origins of the legal battle over America's use of the naval base as a prison and illuminates the troubling ways that politics can influence legal decisions. Above all, though, "Storming the Court" is the David-and-Goliath story of a group of passionate law students who took on their government in the name of the greatest of American values: freedom.
Review
"Want to see how the law really works? Forget the nonsense David vs. Goliath stories from every legal thriller. Here's the real thing. Ruthlessly researched and vividly realized,
Storming the Court will have you hating the law on one page, and ready to sign up for law school on the next. More important, it'll remind you that there's no more tenacious fighter than an idealistic law student."
-- Brad Meltzer, author of The Zero Game
Review
"
Storming the Court movingly captures the emotional highs and despairing lows of the victims and their lawyers in their combined effort to make our government 'do the right thing'. It reads like a mystery thriller -- more a how they done it than a whodunnit -- that grips you from the first page to the last."
-- Gerald Stern, author of The Buffalo Creek Disaster : How the Survivors of One of the Worst Disasters in Coal-mining History Brought Suit Against the Coal Company -- And Won
Review
"A riveting, masterfully told story about a group of brave Yale law students and their professor who fought two presidents on behalf of hundreds of Haitian refugees mired in Guantanamo. Goldstein writes like a dream as he vividly brings the stories of the refugees and their lawyers alive. This book is about an important moment in our nation's moral and legal history, but it also reads like a legal thriller. I could not put it down."
--Clara Bingham, co-author of Class Action: The Landmark Case That Changed Sexual Harassment Law
Review
"Wrote John Ruskin, 'The primary reward for human toil is not what you get for it but what you become by it.' In this book the Yale Law students and their brilliant professor get nothing but become heroes by winning freedom for hundreds of wrongly-incarcerated and mistreated Haitian exiles. Beautifully told by a former student, the story is profoundly moving."
-- William Sloane Coffin, former chaplain of Yale University
Review
"In a gripping and psychologically insightful narrative, Brandt Goldstein tells the story of a group of Yale Law Students who sued two presidents to challenge the internment of Haitian refugees at Guantanamo Bay. Both skeptics and supporters of the litigation will find much to admire in this definitive account, which combines constitutional drama, superb reporting, and shrewd insights from beginning to end."
-- Jeffrey Rosen, author of The Unwanted Gaze and The Naked Crowd
Synopsis
A tale more riveting than fiction,
Storming the Court is the true story of idealistic law students who challenged the United States government in a battle for freedom and human rights that went all the way to the Supreme Court -- and resonates today more than ever.
In 1992, three hundred innocent men, women, and children who had qualified for political asylum in the United States were forced into a detention camp at the American naval base at Guant
About the Author
Brandt Goldstein, a 1992 graduate of Yale Law School, has written for The New York Times Magazine, The Washington Post, Chicago Tribune, and Slate. He writes a monthly feature for The Wall Street Journal online edition and is a visiting professor at New York Law School.
Table of Contents
Contents
One: The Coup
Two: Filing a New Lawsuit
Three: Picking a Judge
Four: Fighting the Stay
Five: The Floating Wall
Six: Going to Guantanamo
Seven: Waiting for the President
Eight: The Hunger Strike
Nine: The Supreme Court
Ten: The Trial
Eleven: Victory and Loss
Epilogue: The Aftermath
The Characters
List of Terms
Notes and Sources
Acknowledgments
Index