page_title: Michael Ratner
section_title: Academic, activist, attorney, and author
hierarchical_section_title: Michael Ratner / Academic, activist, attorney, and author
caption_attribution_description: Michael Ratner, president of the Center for Constitutional Rights, in front of the US Supreme Court in Washington DC.
context_page_description: Michael Ratner was an American attorney. For much of his career, he was president of the Center for Constitutional Rights, a non-profit human rights litigation organization based in New York City, and president of the European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights based in Berlin.
  Ratner "will be most remembered for filing Rasul v. Bush, the first lawsuit challenging President Bush's wartime detentions." He was co-counsel in representing the Guantanamo Bay detainees in the United States Supreme Court, which ruled for the detainees' right to test the legality of their detentions in United States court, saying that the Guantanamo base was effectively an extension of US territory and covered by US law.
  Ratner was also a president of the National Lawyers Guild and the author of numerous books and articles, including the books The Trial of Donald Rumsfeld: A Prosecution by Book, Against War with Iraq, and Guantanamo: What the World Should Know, as well as a textbook on international human rights. Ratner was the co-host of the radio program, Law and Disorder.
caption: Press conference with Amnesty International and CCR in front of the US Supreme Court, 2006
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