Anyone in the US who is concerned about human rights would likely be familiar with the name Michael Ratner who died of cancer on May 11. He was a lawyer who served as long-time president of the Center for Constitutional Rights and took an all manner of unpopular causes, such as fighting on behalf of Julian Assange and for the rights of Guantanamo detainees, where he won an important victory when the US Supreme Court ruled 5 to 4 in 2008 that detainees had the right to the writ of habeas corpus. There have been many obituaries about his life and work and I will quote from just two.
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