Wisdom for the day.

Today, in my Civil Procedure class, we had a surprise. Our teacher introduced us to Lt. Cmdr Charles Swift, famous now for his defense and win in front of the Sumpreme Court in Hamdan v. Rumsfel. It was facinating to get an inside look at such an important and influential case and into the tactics that won. He also shared a few stories of his experience as a law student at Seattle U and a few stories about our professor who was his Civil Procedure professor as well. Overall, pretty cool experience and quite the surprise.

Upon a question from one of my classmates about how he balanced defending a terroist with the knowledge of how dire the threat of terroism is, he used this quote from Thomas Paine to explain himself:
"He that would make his own liberty secure must guard even his enemy from oppression; for if he violates this duty, he establishes a precedent that will reach to himself.

I have struggled morally with how would one defend person's they knew were guilty, such as the defense of Duncan back in Cd'a or how the ACLU can stand up for organization like NAMBLA. I think this quote helps.