ShahidButtar.com / Media / Scholarship & commentary /

My themes

In addition to my work as a civil rights & liberties advocate, I also write about various issues in a range of formats for publications including Huffington Post, Truthout, Alternet, Common Dreams, and Tom Paine.  My interests include constitutional law, executive power, judicial legitimacy and the Rule of Law; U.S. foreign policy, militarism and diplomacy; democracy promotion in the U.S. and abroad; economics, finance and distributive justice; and a variety of other social and political issues implicated from time to time by the day's events.

Speaking from a Muslim perspective isn't really my bag, but I gave it a shot (after kicking a rhyme) at the University of Southern California in March 2009:

My latest

• 1984 in 2010: Hijacking Democracy to Spy on Americans was published on Huffington Post and Truthout on February 17, 2010.  It noted how the Obama administration circumvented Congress to impose reauthorization of the PATRIOT Act despite concerns about domestic spying from across the ideological spectrum.

Civil liberties issues

• Preventive Detention, at What Cost? was published on Huffington Post on July 13, 2009.  It's an op-ed length reflection on how detention without trial has undermined the rule of lawin the past and will do so again if allowed to proceed.  "Whether called 'preventive,' 'indefinite,' or simply 'prolonged,' prevention detention schemes are essentially lawless, unconstitutional, and un-American....At root, detention without trial threatens democracy."  Cross-posts include The People's Campaign for the Constitution, There is No Spoon, After Downing Street, AltMuslim, and the Liberty Coalition.
  
  
• Torturing the Rule of Law was published by Huffington Post on June 27, 2009.  It examines how the reluctance to prosecute torturers betrays the precedent established by the U.S. at Nuremberg 60 years before, undermines the debate on national security policy going forward, and threatens the legitimacy of the criminal justice system given the relentless prosecution of even non-violent crimes.  Cross-posts include the Augusta Free Press and the People's Campaign for the Constitution.
  
  
• Could Gitmo Get Worse? The Policy Implications of Executive Accountability was published on Huffington Post on January 5, 2009.  It examines the implications of President Obama's decision to close Guantanamo Bay, rejects the case for national security courts, and explains why holding Bush Administration officials accountable for war crimes -- as well as outright treason -- is necessary to shift the debate around issues such as preventive detention.
  
  
• Defending Liberty: How to Shift the Center, was posted on Huffington Post on December 1, 2008.  It notes the range of liberty issues disregarded by both major parties, including warrantless wiretapping, LGBT rights, and racial bias in the criminal justice system.  It also discusses the possibility of a left-right Green/Libertarian electoral alliance emerging to defend principles violated by existing policies.  The article suggests why Democrats should welcome a visible Green presence, and a strategy for Green progressives to electorally challenge Democrats without inadvertently placing conservatives at an advantage.  Finally, it identifies a promising Green candidate who (at the time) was nearing a crucial election with national implications.
  
  
• "Subsidizing Corporate Crime and Rewarding Constitutional Abuses," which ran on Huffington Post on April 22, 2008, was cross-posted by Common Dreams, Common Man News, the Information Clearinghouse, the Iowa Peace Network, the Grassroots Networks Alliance, and Dandelion Salad. The piece suggests that  the Senate's attempt to immunize telecommunications firms from litigation over the NSA spying program constitutes corporate welfare for an industry that has long sucked at the government's teat.  The article also challenges the underlying rationale for domestic surveillance, arguing that such schemes inundate analysts and thus undermine -- rather than enhance -- legitimate counterterrorism aims.  Finally, it recalls that other reported surveillance programs remain unconfirmed, and notes the perverse incentives created by potential immunity for private firms facing future decisions about whether to comply with other secret government programs.
  
  
• "Justice at Stake: Ensuring That Prisoners in the U.S. Are Never 'Disappeared'," appeared on Alterneton July 20, 2007.  It was cross-posted on AfterDowningStreet, as well as DeadIssue, The Peace Tree, The (Bay Area) Peninsula Peace & Justice Center, The Campaign to Repeal the Torture Law,  and a blog run by a Democracy for America chapter in Maryland.  This piece focuses on the Military Commissions Act of 2006, especially its revocation of habeas rights and provisions effectively authorizing torture.  It frames both issues in a historical context, noting the longstanding use of torture as an instrument of U.S. policy, the world-historical significance of the emergence of habeas rights, and the perspective of torture survivors, before concluding that the MCA's "most problematic provisions have drawn worthy criticism, but those provisions should not be repealed piecemeal.  Instead, the MCA should be rescinded in its entirety."
  

National policy

• "Secrecy Sacrificing National Security" was published on Huffington Post on June 10, 2009.  It discusses secrecy promoted by the Obama administration across three contexts, including (i) depictions of torture whose implications have been contorted by the mainstream discourse, (ii) secret surveillance policies, and (iii) a secret FBI policy mandating ethnic & religious profiling that I recently sought via a FOIA request following briefings with senior FBI officials late last year.  Cross-posts include USA Today, DailyKos, the Wall Street Journal, SiloBreaker, Liberty Beat, and others.
  
  
• "Leaving Cards on the Counter-Terror Table: Ways to Better Wage the "War on Terror," appeared on Huffington Post on February 25, 2009, from which it was cross-posted on Alternet and alt.Muslim, as well as PoliTrix.  The article identifies several sets of corporate subsidies that inadvertently fuel terrorism at its root, including agricultural subsidies, tariffs on textile imports, the war on drugs and U.S. military support for dictators around the world.
  

• "After the (Grand Old) Party: Don't Go Home Just Yet," posted on Huffington Post on November 11, 2008.  This article identifies challenges confronting the new Administration, including "the moderate Congress, the right-wing Court, and holdovers from the Bush years within his Administration and the federal bureaucracy."  It also discusses an opportunity to transform American politics by relegating the Republican Party to the national margin and shifting the center of the policy discourse, and distinguishes Newt Gingrich's similar claim in 1994 from the circumstances of 2008. 
  
  
• "The Failed Bailout: A Drop in the Bucket and Abusive to Renters," appeared on Huffington Post on October 1, 2008. It reviews the financial impact of the (then-proposed) bailout versus various areas of fundamental weakness in the economy, concluding that proposals (similar to the one ultimately adopted) would ultimately be "a drop in the bucket" and could not possibly help avert an inevitable economic depression. It also investigates the bailout's distributive effects, taking specific issue with its impact on renters. Sites cross-posting it included Democracy for America, Deft Mag and Beltway Blips.
  
  
• "Fire Gonzales…or the Whole Junta?," was published by CommonDreamson May 23, 2007.  AfterDowningStreet cross-posted it, as did ImpeachPAC, as well as True Blue Liberal and Progressive Democrats of America, and Consortiumblog quoted it at length.  The analysis frames the controversy over Attorney General Alberto Gonzales' tenure at the Justice Department in broad terms, placing it in the context of the Bush Administration's subversion of democratic principles. I review the administration's various civil liberties abuses, identify several violations of the separation of powers, locate a number of concerns with democratic transparency, and conclude that "[o]nly the impeachment of the Vice President and President can restore the Rule of Law to the United States."

Constitutional law

• "Bush v. Gore Rears Its Head (Part IV): A New Check on the Court to Defend the Rule of Law" is the final part in a year-long series exploring the Supreme Court.  It was published on May 28, 2009 and identifies examples of inter-branch collusion with Executive officials violating not only the separation of powers doctrine, but also antitrust principles routinely applied to economic markets.  It also recommends a new structural check on the Court to prevent its future politicization: legislation to set 18-year terms for service in the Article III Judiciary to prevent the Court from being co-opted, ensure regularity in appointments, and preserve the Justices' insulation from political pressures.
  
  
• "Bush v. Gore Rears Its Head (Part III): Souter's Resignation as an Invitation to Balance a Politicized Court," is the third in a series examining the Supreme Court and appeared on Huffington Post on May 12, 2009.  The article argues that "the timing of Souter's resignation appears to reflect not only a brilliant man's pursuit of a simpler life, but also an invitation to the Obama Administration to boldly reshape the Court and restore its eroded legitimacy as a guardian of neutral legal principles. At a minimum, the Administration should choose a nominee who brings vision, depth, and assertiveness to the Court...."  Cross posts inclded the National Journal's Ninth Justice blog.
  
  
• "Bush v. Gore Rears Its Head (Part II): The Triumph of Politics Over Law," is the second in a series examining the political co-optation of the U.S. Supreme Court by partisan conservatives and was posted on Huffington Post on July 30, 2008. This article expands the analysis of The Politicization of Voting Rights beyond voting rights, examining other recent decisions that rewrote longstanding constitutional doctrines while perpetuating racial marginalization, restricting reproductive freedom, diminishing political equality and politically entrenching established class interests. It also explores the limited comfort offered by the Court's occasional willingness to check the Executive.
  
  
• "Fourth Circuit Decision in Al-Marri 'Repudiates the Most Fundamental Element of Constitutional Liberty'" was posted on ACSBlog on July 22, 2008.  It reflects on the implications of a then-recent ruling by a federal appeals court that essentially approved the designation of even U.S. citizens as "enemy combatants" based on Congress' 2001 Authorization to Use Military Force in Afghanistan.
  
  
• "Bush v. Gore Rears Its Head (Part I): The Politicization of Voting Rights" is the first in a series examining the political co-optation of the U.S. Supreme Court by partisan conservatives. This article ran on Huffington Post on May 23, 2008, and examines the Court's decision in Crawford v. Marion County Election Bd., which upheld an Indiana law imposing restrictions on the right to vote by adding new photo ID requirements -- despite their clear violation of longstanding constitutional principles prohibiting economic barriers to the ballot. In particular, I address and refute the conventional wisdom that Justice Stevens' participation in the majority renders the decision jurisprudentially defensible, rather than a naked exercise of power by a Court increasingly inclined to violate its institutional limits and decide contested political questions. Part II will place Crawford in the context of other politicized rulings by the Roberts Court while demonstrating the inadequacy of traditional checks on the Court. Finally, Part III will consider its role going forward and present a proposal to effectively balance the Court.
  
  
• "A Deadly Misreading," appeared on TomPaine.com on April 30, 2007.  It was picked up by Democratic Underground, as well as the blog of the libertarian Conservative Revolutionary American Party, and it also received welcome criticism from the Lone Star Times, to which I respond here.  My op-ed discusses the Virginia Tech shootings and analyzes the Second Amendment, concluding that it has been misconstrued and co-opted by the gun lobby.  Rather than protect gun ownership, I argue that the Amendment should protect assertive acts of nonviolent protest as an independent check on tyrannical government. 
  
  
• "Justices Shift with Society, but Will Justice?," appeared in April 2007 in The Contra Costa Times, as well as How Appealing and TCPalm in Palm Beach, Florida.  It discusses the increased public media presence of Supreme Court Justices under Chief Justice John Roberts, and draws out a tension with the jurisprudential methodology employed by the Court's right-wing majority.
  
  
• My fears about Justice Alito joining the Supreme Court were expressed in an email which I circulated shortly before his confirmation in January 2006; it was posted by the Progressive Democrats of America and CounterHegemony blogs.

Domestic politics

• "Even Bigger Than the Hype: Obama's Candidacy as World-Historical," ran on Huffington Post on June 12, 2008.  The column examines the continuing impacts of colonialism on developing countries around the globe, as well as the ongoing persistence of institutional racism in the United States.  It argues that Obama's identity as the "the first standard-bearer of colonized peoples to lead a global superpower" renders him analogous to a "colonized tail" that "wags the imperial dog."  Finally, the article observes how Obama's words and example are each reinforcing two fundamental American narratives, "America's meritocracy and our cultural inclusiveness," at a time when both are threatened and the Republic's international standing is in crisis.
  
  
• "Musharraf's Playbook is the Same as the Bush Administration's," which I co-authored with Naomi Wolf, ran on Huffington Post on February 15, 2008 and was cross-posted at Common Dreams, Democratic Underground, After Downing Street, the Peninsula Peace & Justice Center, and the Muslim Discussion Forum.  We identify a number of areas in which President Bush's domestic agenda has sought the same goals, through many of the same strategies, as the Musharraf dictatorship in Pakistan supported by the White House.
  
  
• "Already Stolen: The Electoral Process and Democratic Legitimacy in the US" appeared in the February / March, 2005 edition of Left Turn: Notes from the Global Intifada.

U.S. foreign policy

• "Bush's Hands Bear Bhutto's Blood," my analysis of the crisis in Pakistan, was published after Benazir Bhutto's December 2007 assassination on Informed Comment.  A shorter version also ran on Alternet, as well as several blogs in the U.S. and Europe.  This article also prompted some commentary on broadcast outlets including Air America and WBAI in New York.
  
  
• "Supporting Musharraf Fuels Crisis in Pakistan," is an analysis that ran on Foreign Policy in Focus on October 15, 2007.  It also appeared on Juan Cole's Informed Comment blog.  The article examines the crisis in Pakistan and argues that "The Iranian revolution of 1979 transformed U.S. foreign policy, demonstrating the counter-productivity of claiming to promote democracy while impeding it. Today, it is in Pakistan that American support for a secular, pro-business dictator has helped precipitate a fundamentalist backlash coinciding with a secular legitimacy crisis – and this time, nuclear weapons hang in the balance."  The analysis was reinforced by a former National Security Council officer focused on Iran during the 1979 revolution, as well as prominent journalist and scholar Ahmed Rashid, who wrote that "Musharraf's declaration of emergency rule [in early November] will only encourage . . . greater territorial gains by the extremist Pakistani Taliban."
  
  
• "Undermining our Own Principles—and Power—in Pakistan," appeared on TomPaine.com on April 18, 2007.  It was also picked up by Just Foreign Policy, as well as the USC Center on Public Diplomacy, independent media outlet World-News, the Information Clearing House and Begin Rambling.  This piece analyzes the history of the U.S. foreign policy establishment, discusses the ongoing constitutional crisis in Pakistan, and notes the dangerous implications of U.S. support for Dictator/President Musharraf.
  
  
• "Students Reflect on Lockheed Martin Protest," was a May 2, 2003 column in The Stanford Daily that I wrote with Jessica Jenkins.

Social commentary

• "Middle Ground: Grassroots Art as a Tool for Peace & Justice" was a column I wrote with co-author Hawah that appeared in the January 6, 2007 edition of The Kashmir Times, as well as the January 12, 2007 edition of The Friday Times in Lahore, Pakistan.
  
  
• "Inconvenient for whom?" was a letter-to-the-editor responding to an August, 2007 column in The Boulder Weekly critical of a proposed local immigration / political process reform.  I argue that immigrants are rightful, patriotic and proud members of our communities and that all Americans should encourage, rather than disparage, efforts by local governments to include us in public life.
  
  
• "A Chance to Bridge Social Gaps: The Arrival of Independent Online Media," appeared in the Winter 2002-03 issue of Garlic & Grass: A Grassroots Journal of America's Political Soul that I co-authored with Jessica Philie.
  

My academic scholarship and policy proposals

• Unreasonable Intrusions: Investigating the Politics, Faith & Finances of Americans Returning Home, is a report I researched and authored in May 2009 on behalf of Muslim Advocates.
  
  
• "Defending Dictatorship: U.S. Foreign Policy and Pakistan's Struggle for Democracy" is a report I co-authored in January 2008 with others on a factfinding delegation from the National Lawyers Guild invited to Pakistan by the Lahore University of Management Sciences' Rule of Law Project.
  
  
• "Resurrecting 'Death Taxes': Inheritance, Redistribution, and the Science of Happiness" is a Fall 2002 law review article in The Journal of Law & Politics at the University of Virginia Law School.  I co-authored the article the summer before starting law school, combining my undergraduate thesis rejecting inheritance rights with early research on hedonic psychology by Professor J.D. Trout of Loyola University Chicago, my undergrad alma mater.