For Immediate Release
January 9, 2006

Contact:
Elissa Free, (202) 662-9500

WASHINGTON, D.C. – For his "unflagging efforts to preserve the legal rights of detainees in the U.S., at Guantánamo Bay, and around the world," Georgetown University Law Center Professor David Cole was presented a 2006 M. Shanara Gilbert Human Rights Award by the Society of American Law Teachers (SALT).  Cole received the award on January 6 at SALT’s annual dinner during the Association of American Law Schools (AALS) annual meeting in Washington, D.C. 

SALT, America's largest membership organization for teachers of law, is committed to "creating and maintaining a community of progressive and caring law professors dedicated to making a difference through the power of law."

In accepting the honor, Cole spoke of the importance of citizens standing up and speaking out when the government sacrifices civil liberties unnecessarily in the war on terror, and argued that a wide range of voices of opposition, both within and outside the country, had made a substantial difference in checking government abuse.  "I am especially grateful to my colleagues in academia, in the public interest world, and particularly at Georgetown and the Center for Constitutional Rights," he said, "for their support and their work on behalf of the values this country stands for at its best."  

Cole, whom New York Times columnist Anthony Lewis has called "one of the country's great legal voices for civil liberties today," has been an outspoken advocate for civil liberties from the earliest days after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. Indeed, Cole's passion for civil liberties pre-dates Sept.11, as he spent nearly two decades litigating constitutional cases involving charges of terrorist affiliation and national security.  

His book, Enemy Aliens, argues that we have selectively sacrificed the liberties of immigrants for the purported security of the majority, but that these sacrifices have paved the way for infringements on citizens' liberties as well.  

In addition to teaching at Georgetown Law, Cole is a volunteer attorney with the Center for Constitutional Rights, with whom he shared the Human Rights Award.  He is also the legal affairs correspondent for The Nation and a commentator on National Public Radio’s All Things Considered. He is the author of No Equal Justice: Race and Class in the American Criminal Justice System (1999), which was named Best Nonfiction Book of 1999 by the Boston Book Review, and co-author of Terrorism and the Constitution (second revised edition, 2006).                   

About Georgetown University Law Center

Georgetown University Law Center is one of the world's premier law schools. It has the largest full-time faculty in the nation and is pre-eminent in several areas, including constitutional, international, tax and clinical law. Drawing on its Jesuit heritage, it has a strong tradition of public service and is dedicated to the principle that law is but a means, justice is the end. With this principle in mind, the Law Center has built an environment that cultivates an exchange of ideas and the pursuit of academic excellence. It brings together an extraordinarily varied group of teachers, scholars and practitioners, as well as an outstanding student body.

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