Jennifer Van Bergen :: The JVB Line

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Ms. Van Bergen is teaching in Prague this fall semester 2008. She is a lecturer in law at the Anglo-American University in Prague, www.aauni.edu, and also teaches English at Charles University in Prague.

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The PATRIOT Act and Other Dilutions of the Constitution

America's Parallel Legal Systems

By JENNIFER VAN BERGEN

“Danger, Will Robinson!”

For those who don’t remember the Robot in the 1960’s television series, “Lost in Space,” he was friends with the youngest member of the outer space Swiss Family Robinson and he regularly warned the young man whenever there was any incipient danger.

Too bad we don’t have a robot friend who can tell us what the dangers to democracy are today.

One of those dangers in America is the emergence of parallel legal systems.

Bush & the Unitary Executive Doctrine

National Security Courts and Torture Warrants

If They Lie in Public, What Would They Do in Secret?

http://www.counterpunch.org/bergen08202004.html

By JENNIFER VAN BERGEN August 20, 2004

Two recent articles by Andrew C. McCarthy, a contributor to the National Review and a former chief assistant U.S. attorney who led the prosecution of Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman in connection with the first World Trade Center bombing,[1] discuss related topics of great interest to those concerned about how we handle the war on terrorism. In one, McCarthy discusses the topics of torture, the laws of war, the laws prohibiting torture, the POW status, and finally torture warrants.[2] In the other, McCarthy proposes a new court system which he calls a "national security court."[3] I admire the intelligence and clarity of McCarthy's analyses (and can overlook his occasional pot-shots at leftists and "pie-in-the-sky libertarians"), and he nearly convinces me, but in the end I find flaws and disagree with his conclusions. Let's look at them.