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July 20, 2001
Dear Friends,
The National Lawyers Guild is exploring the legal, economic and viable political grounds for launching a broad-based impeachment campaign against the five members of the Bush v. Gore majority on the Supreme Court.
We are writing to ask for your input, support and, if possible, endorsement of the projected campaign.
We have a commitment from a very high ranking member of the House Judiciary Committee that he will introduce the bills of impeachment if we can create the political support to back up serious campaign effort.
At our recent meeting, our National Executive Committee voted to recommend to its members at the Guild's National Convention in October that the Guild launch such a campaign based on considered discussion of the illegitimacy of the Supreme Court following its misconduct in last fall's election and in the context of their other recent decisions unconstitutionally assaulting civil and economic rights.
Our recommendation, however, is contingent on a decision by the Guild Convention this October that the political support and viable legal grounds exist for such a campaign.
We are thus approaching a range of organizations in the next two months to ask for "sense of the body" resolutions, letters from directors, or even full endorsements so that we can assess the real support for mounting a successful campaign. The National Lawyers Guild intends to commit serious resources to the campaign if our national convention endorses it, but we must first evaluate whether and to what extent such support exists. We would be glad to provide you with copies of the materials we are circulating debating the potential campaign which will be located at our web site.
To be clear about our strategic approach, we very specifically will NOT be arguing that our democratic system would have been fine if the Supreme Court had not intervened and Gore won. We are framing this campaign in the broadest terms connecting the whole set of issues of electoral disenfranchisement and connecting it to the range of rightwing court decisions that are rolling back the civil and economic rights of our nation.
Below is the resolution approved at the NEC meeting. We are devoting one of our main plenaries at the Convention solely to this topic:
"We recommend to the convention that the National Lawyers Guild support an impeachment campaign if we determine that it will be politically effective.
Whereas the NEC believes that the Supreme Court violated the law,
Whereas impeachment may contribute to the opposition to the right-wing judicial takeover
Therefore, be it resolved, that the NEC endorses a campaign to impeach the "Felonious Five" majority of the Supreme Court contingent on a decision by the convention that there are legal, economic and viable political grounds for such a campaign."
We appreciate your organization's support and thoughts on this endeavor.
Please send endorsements or refer questions to impeachment at nlg.org or call 212-627-2656. Please also check our web site for informational materials and updates at http://www.nlg.org/Impeachment/Impeachment_Index.htm.
In Solidarity,
Heidi Bogosian Executive Director National Lawyers Guild
Background on the NLG: The National Lawyers Guild is an association of lawyers, legal workers, law students and jailhouse lawyers committed to fighting social injustice in this country and internationally. Founded, in 1937, the Guild has been at the forefront of the legal and political struggles of ordinary people to end oppression and discrimination in our society for over sixty years. Go to www.nlg.org for more info.