Law Profs and Others Invited to Sign on to Yale Statement on Pakistan

From the FLP mailbox:

The following statement was released Wednesday, November 7, 2007, by Yale Law School Dean Harold Hongju Koh, Simeon E. Baldwin Professor of Law Peter Schuck, Oscar M. Ruebhausen Fellow in Law Jeff Redding, and other members of the Yale Law School community. If you would like to add your name to the list, please email your name and title (for identification purposes only) to carolyn.poole@yale.edu.

“We, the undersigned friends and members of the Yale Law School community-faculty, students, alumni, administration, and staff-denounce in the strongest terms General Pervez Musharraf’s recent assault on the rule of law in Pakistan. By suspending the Constitution; dissolving the Supreme Court and the provincial High Courts and replacing them with judges of his own choosing; engaging in arbitrary and unprovoked arrests of thousands of opposition leaders, journalists, and other law-abiding citizens; and violently suppressing protests by hundreds of lawyers (including graduates of our school) who were acting in the highest tradition of our profession, General Musharraf is trampling upon the very system of law that alone can justify a ruler’s power over his people. We stand in solidarity with our fellow lawyers and the democratic values that they represent, and we urge an early restoration of legality and legitimate authority in Pakistan.”

Harold Hongju Koh

Dean and Gerard C. and Bernice Latrobe Smith Professor of International Law, Yale Law School

[other signatories omitted]