{"id":1647,"date":"2011-12-12T18:36:49","date_gmt":"2011-12-12T22:36:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.therowboat.com\/?p=1647"},"modified":"2011-12-12T18:36:49","modified_gmt":"2011-12-12T22:36:49","slug":"a-law-higher-than-the-law","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nathanschneider.info\/2011\/12\/a-law-higher-than-the-law\/","title":{"rendered":"A Law Higher than the Law"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/object><\/p>\n

Law, law, law. The other day I published an essay about the renegade lawyer William Stringfellow<\/a>. Today I’ve got a new one at Harper’s<\/em><\/a>\u00a0exploring what Occupy Wall Street has to do, if anything at all, with the First Amendment. Most people think it does, and I think they’re mostly wrong. Here’s a bit of it:<\/p>\n

As the movement matured, \u2026 it became common practice for occupiers to make reference to the guarantees of the First Amendment as they justified their actions to the public. The \u201cDeclaration of the Occupation of New York City,\u201d passed by the General Assembly on September 29, states, \u201cWe have peaceably assembled here, as is our right.\u201d It further calls on \u201cthe people of the world\u201d to \u201cexercise your right to peaceably assemble; occupy public space; create a process to address the problems we face, and generate solutions accessible to everyone.\u201d The \u201cStatement of Autonomy\u201d passed on November 1 described the occupation as \u201ca forum for peaceful assembly.\u201d Meanwhile, lawyers working on behalf of the movement were trying to establish, on First Amendment grounds, the occupations\u2019 legal right to exist \u2014 even as the constant police presence around the occupiers suggested that they had none. The \u201cright\u201d the legal documents spoke of were more an aspiration than a reality.<\/p>\n

Ultimately, however, the struggle didn\u2019t play out on legal grounds; Zuccotti Park remained occupied mostly thanks to extra-legal pressures. When the city proposed to clean the park on October 14 \u2014 effectively a forcible removal \u2014 thousands of people arrived before dawn to stand in the way. A month later, when the eviction finally came, it was as a surprise in the middle of the night. The difference wasn\u2019t so much legal as tactical.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

In the end, I think the “peaceable assembly” this movement is doing is less about the letter of the law than about a law inscribed in us elsewhere\u2014in the conscience. Call be a bad lawyer. Or maybe just go ahead and call me an anarchist.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

<\/object><\/p>\n

Law, law, law. The other day I published an essay about the renegade lawyer William Stringfellow<\/a>. Today I’ve got a new one at Harper’s<\/em><\/a>\u00a0exploring what Occupy Wall Street has to do, if anything at all, with the First Amendment. Most people think it does, and I think they’re mostly wrong. Here’s a bit of it:<\/p>\n

As the movement matured, \u2026 it became common practice for occupiers to make reference to the guarantees of the First Amendment as they justified their actions to the public. The \u201cDeclaration of the Occupation of New York City,\u201d passed by the General Assembly on September 29, states, \u201cWe have peaceably assembled here, as is our right.\u201d It further calls on \u201cthe people of the world\u201d to \u201cexercise your right to peaceably assemble; occupy public space; create a process to address the problems we face, and generate solutions accessible to everyone.\u201d The \u201cStatement of Autonomy\u201d passed on November 1 described the occupation as \u201ca forum for peaceful assembly.\u201d Meanwhile, lawyers working on behalf of the movement were trying to establish, on First Amendment grounds, the occupations\u2019 legal right to exist \u2014 even as the constant police presence around the occupiers suggested that they had none. The \u201cright\u201d the legal documents spoke of were more an aspiration than a reality.<\/p>\n

Ultimately, however, the struggle didn\u2019t play out on legal grounds; Zuccotti Park remained occupied mostly thanks to extra-legal pressures. When the city proposed to clean the park on October 14 \u2014 effectively a forcible removal \u2014 thousands of people arrived before dawn to stand in the way. A month later, when the eviction finally came, it was as a surprise in the middle of the night. The difference wasn\u2019t so much legal as tactical.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

In the end, I think the “peaceable assembly” this movement is doing is less about the letter of the law than about a law inscribed in us elsewhere\u2014in the conscience. Call be a bad lawyer. Or maybe just go ahead and call me an anarchist.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[41,56,55,40,87,31,100,82,68],"class_list":["post-1647","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-posts","tag-double-truth","tag-human-rights","tag-language","tag-logic","tag-memory","tag-new-york-city","tag-performance","tag-politics","tag-truth"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nathanschneider.info\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1647"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nathanschneider.info\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nathanschneider.info\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nathanschneider.info\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nathanschneider.info\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1647"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/nathanschneider.info\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1647\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1649,"href":"https:\/\/nathanschneider.info\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1647\/revisions\/1649"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nathanschneider.info\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1647"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nathanschneider.info\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1647"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nathanschneider.info\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1647"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}