Talk to Wooster
Summer 2006
Denbeaux & Denbeaux: Defending an American Value
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Story
Selma,
Alabama, 1965. Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, 2006. Different centuries, different
countries—but the link between the two is significant for attorney Mark Denbeaux
'65. He says he will never forget the 54-mile civil rights march that he and
two other Wooster students joined. "Selma was an ugly and scary place. But
it was also one of the most moving
experiences in my life."
It was this 1965 march for justice and its lasting effect that prompted Mark to take on another ugly and scary place—the maximum security prison in Guantanamo, Cuba, for men the U.S. government has classified as enemy combatants. Mark and his son, attorney Josh Denbeaux '90, are volunteering their services to defend two of the 517 prisoners at the prison. They do so because they care about the most basic of human rights—protection against arbitrary and lawless state imprisonment by a fair trial.
"The right of humanity to a trial trumps any kind of political agenda," says Josh. "I don't care what party you're from, or what part of the country you represent, or who your constituents are—human rights has to take the front burner before everything else.
"It hasn't."
“Just get me out of here.”
Mark and Josh volunteered to represent Rafiq Basher and Mohammed Rahman in 2005, after the Supreme Court ruled that Guantanamo Bay prisoners were allowed legal representation. "I was too old to do this by myself," says Mark. "But Josh was willing, so we've done it together."
The opportunity to partner with his son on a case of such significance has brought its own rewards, says Mark, a professor of law at Seton Hall Law School, Newark, N.J. Josh is a partner in the law firm of Denbeaux and Denbeaux in Westwood, N.J., and New City, New York, where he specializes in litigation and partners with his mother, Marcia Wood Denbeaux x'66. Josh is married to Sally Robson Denbeaux '89.
Josh says his dad talked him into it. Mark says his son had been "fussing about Guantanamo for a long time."
Josh's fussing came in the form of stark disbelief at the U.S. government's story of the detainees. "What are the chances that the 517 people the government has snatched from a culture it does not understand, halfway across the world, with no intelligence on the ground, were exactly the right terrorists?" asks Josh. "What are the chances that these guys are—as our defense secretary called them, 'the worst of the worst'? From the very start, I didn't believe it."
