Dear Editor:
Like others, it is so difficult for me to write of Arthur's death, because
it makes the loss real. Arthur was there at my own beginnings in refugee
law and rights, and since then has been such a consistent presence and
force. With many others (I dare not list for I will leave some out), he
was in the leadership as the struggle for Haitian refugee rights unfolded
in the late 70s and early 80s, and was a major proponent of international
law, arguing that international law is relevant, part of our domestic law,
in particular in the refugee field. Arthur was one of the very first to
argue in court that indefinite detention of refugees was illegal under the
Refugee Convention. He was one of the first in the our field to argue that
international human rights treaty norms are binding, irrespective of
direct, domestic incorporation. He organized a maverick pro bono program
at the Lawyers Committee, which was critical to the political and judicial
decision to end the first era of selective, discriminatory detention of
Haitian refugees, in the early 1980s He entered every critical asylum
policy debate over the past three decades and was exceptionally creative;
he found and shaped the different organizational fora in which he did his
work, from the Lawyers Committee to Soros to the Council on Foreign
Relations. Forceful, reasoned and credible, Arthur combined advocacy and
scholarship in all of his work. Arthur also was there for the individual
people and cases too. I can remember my sister calling with a friend's
difficult asylum case, and he intervened and helped quietly and
successfully. For me, Arthur's legacy is a persistent and focused
humanitarian vision for refugees. He never gave up. He just found new
ways. He is a reminder to all of us that our legal and scholarly work is a
complicated but hopefully in the end transformative public policy
discussion, a conversation with our courts, with our politicians, with the
American people, reminding them over and over again that refugees and
migrants hold basic human rights, and that those rights are shared and
universal.
Deborah Anker
Harvard Immigration and Refugee Clinic
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