By Ann W. Parks

Robert F. Muse Jr. (L’71) served as Sam Dash's assistant as a law student at Georgetown.

The late Georgetown Law Professor Sam Dash understood the importance of accountability in protecting human rights. In the 1970s, Dash was sent to Ireland by the International League of Human Rights to investigate the events of “Bloody Sunday” — the 1972 incident when members of the British army fired on a crowd of civil rights protesters in Derry, killing 13. The Lord Chief Justice of the United Kingdom, Lord Widgery, had conducted an inquiry into the incident but concluded, in what many would later call a whitewash, that the unarmed protesters were responsible for their own deaths.

“Sam was outraged,” said Robert F. Muse Jr. (L’71), who told the story at Georgetown Law’s 2011 Samuel Dash Conference on Human Rights on March 15. Muse, now a partner with Stein, Mitchell and Muse in Washington, D.C., began more than 38 years of working with the families of the Bloody Sunday victims when he served as Dash’s assistant as a law student at Georgetown. “He could not abide the notion that Widgery would remain unchallenged. But how does one challenge the Lord Chief Justice? Sam rolled up his sleeves and did it with the tools he had.”

Dash, with Muse’s help, “proceeded to dismember Widgery’s conclusions” — investigating and publishing his own report, Justice Denied: A Challenge to Lord Widgery’s Report on “Bloody Sunday” later that same year. But it wasn’t until June 15, 2010 — after a new 12-year inquiry into the matter, based in part on Dash’s findings — that the British government formally apologized for the shootings. Dash, unfortunately, did not live to witness the apology; he died in 2004.

Muse’s remarks came during “The Role of Accountability in Protecting Human Rights and National Security,” presented by Georgetown Law’s Human Rights Institute, the Center on National Security and the Law and Human Rights First.

Experts including Professor Laura Donohue, acting director of the Center on National Security and the Law; the Constitution Project's Louis Fisher; Daryl Joseffer, a former principal deputy U.S. solicitor general; and Eric Lichtblau, national security reporter for the New York Times addressed the U.S. government’s use of the state secrets privilege to protect national security. Donohue also announced the launch of Georgetown Law’s new State Secrets Archives, the most comprehensive publicly available online database of materials related to the privilege.

Subsequent discussions examined strategies for pursuing accountability for human rights violations in the national security context as well as accountability for private security contractors overseas.

“[One] panel talked about patience, and patience is absolutely imperative to human rights,” Muse said — adding that people will find a way to be heard, whether in Derry, Guantanamo, Libya or anywhere else. “So let those in power know, victims will find a voice, governments will not be able to suppress the truth and history will condemn those who violate human rights.”

To view a webcast of the Dash Conference, click here.

 

March 24, 2011