Forget empty rhetoric in vacuum-sealed classroom: This UT grad course puts students to work defending not just Guantánamo Bay detainees but the U.S. Constitution itself. Taking high-profile cases and real defendants all the way to the Supreme Court, this clinic's challenges of the Detainee Treatment Act and the Military Commissions Act are reminders that constitutional freedoms must be defended. Smeared as unpatriotic, its staff and students are passionate reminders of Ben Franklin’s words: “They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.”
