The lawyers showed up. And they won.

[pnwmom]

At least, for the time being . . .

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/jurisprudence/2017/01/lawyers_take_on_donald_trump_s_muslim_ban.html?wpsrc=sh_all_dt_fb_top

For weeks, we have been wondering about the lawyers. What suits would they file? Would they have standing? Could they have any impact? Saturday, the lawyers showed up. Bigly. And happily, for America, the courts are still independent, and largely allergic to “alternative facts.” This is a country where the law matters and the Constitution endures. And it’s also a country in which hordes of lawyers just showed up at airports to defend detained travelers ensnared under Donald Trump’s lawless and unconstitutional Muslim ban.

Dahlia Lithwick writes about the courts and the law for Slate, and hosts the podcast Amicus.
In San Francisco, the massive crowd at the airport chanted “let the lawyers in.” At JFK in New York, lawyers hunched on the floor over their laptops, filing emergency habeas motions. In Philadelphia and Chicago and at Washington Dulles, the crowds asked for nothing more than this: Let the lawyers speak to their clients.

And in Brooklyn, U.S. District Judge Ann Donnelly, an Obama appointee, in an emergency hearing, stayed a big chunk of the executive order on the theory that forcing the detainees at the airports to return to their countries of birth would cause them grievous harm. The ACLU challenged the Trump administration’s broad and chaotic ban on Saturday morning, and by Saturday night, Donnelly had ruled that no immigrants with visas should be trapped in airports just because they happened to be traveling on the day Steve Bannon was writing executive orders.

The ACLU filed its habeas corpus petition on behalf of Hameed Khalid Darweesh and Haider Sameer Abdulkhaleq Alshawi, both of whom were denied entry to the U.S. at JFK Airport. Donnelly issued a nationwide stay, barring the federal government from deporting any lawful immigrants who had arrived after the ban was issued or those en route. Within an hour, a second stay was issued in Virginia by Judge Leonie Brinkema, who blocked the removal of any green card holders who were being detained at Dulles Airport. Brinkema further ruled that those detained under the Trump ban were to be granted access to lawyers. (As of this writing, those held at Dulles Airport still have not been allowed access to lawyers.)

SNIP

[Cha]

1. Thank you!

[pnwmom]

2. Wasn't it great to see them flooding into the airports? A legal army. n/t

[Cha]

3. So Encouraging and Inspiring.. just what we needed. The Lawyers

and all the Dems who were @ the Airports, too!

[Princess Turandot]

4. One of the things that I was curious about was how the ACLU et al even knew this was happening...

given the timing of it.

It turns out that Mr. Darweesh was accompanied by his wife and his three kids, all on special immigration visas. They let the wife and the kids through but detained him. An attorney here in the US was working with them and was at JFK for their arrival. They would not let him speak with Darweesh and in fact, then tried to get the wife to go back to their secured area to be interviewed. The attorney refused on her behalf, and had the wife and kids leave JFK at that point.

That must've started the ball rolling. It's a good thing that international flights usually come to large urban centers, where attorneys from the ACLU and similar organizations are available locally and on-call, as well as a federal district court where if need be, you can wake up a federal judge.

I have no doubt that numerous legal organizations, as well as state attorneys general (in enlightened states), have been waiting for these a-holes to implement orders that violate the Constitution, harming someone and giving them a cause of action. This is only round one.

I hope that the various motions to hold these creeps in contempt of court are successful, even if it won't extend to Boy King.

[pnwmom]

5. I remember hearing that. It was so lucky for the wife (and everyone else) that the lawyer

was there to advise her.

Another thing that was lucky was the timing -- happening on Friday night, which meant most of the lawyers probably had the weekend free.

[bhikkhu]

6. In the future, any lawyer joke will be met with steely eyes by me

rather than just silence. The rule of law isn't a thing we can take for granted, and lawyers are on the front lines and in the trenches.

[pnwmom]

7. I know a few lawyers who are feeling pretty proud of their profession right now.

And they should be. They stand between us and oppression.

[Gothmog]

8. I know several lawyers who have been at IAH

The profession is stepping up to meet this crisis

[pnwmom]

9. I know a conservative lawyer (he considers himself a centrist, but whatever)

who is appalled by what has been happening. He voted for Hillary because he couldn't vote for the orange menace, and everything he was afraid of has been coming true. I hope there are a lot more like him out there, including some who might have voted for DT and are now regretting it.

[Aristus]

10. It's important to remember that when Shakespeare wrote: "First thing we do,

let's kill all the lawyers", he put those words into the mouth of a character who was plotting to overthrow the government, and wanted to ensure that the people would have no access to legal protection under his rule.

Next time some smug anti-lawyer type quotes this to anyone, set him straight.

Thank God for those lawyers! They did us proud...