Center for Constitutional Rights

The Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR; formerly Law Center for Constitutional Rights) is an American progressive non-profit legal advocacy organization based in New York City. It was founded in 1966 by lawyers William Kunstler, Arthur Kinoy, Morty Stavis and Ben Smith, particularly to support activists in the implementation of civil rights legislation and to pursue social justice causes.

CCR has focused on civil liberties and human rights litigation, and activism. Since winning the landmark case in the United States Supreme Court, Rasul v. Bush (2004), establishing the right of detainees at Guantanamo Bay detainment camp to challenge their status in US courts and gain legal representation.

Incorporation for the Civil Rights Legal Defense Fund was filed on September 9, 1966; in February, 1967, the name was changed to the Law Center for Constitutional Rights. In 1970, the name was shortened to the Center for Constitutional Rights. The founders, Morton Stavis, Arthur Kinoy, Ben Smith and William Kunstler, came together through their civil rights work in the American South. By 1970, according to one unaffiliated lawyer quoted at the time, CCR had become "the leading gathering place for radical lawyers in the country."

The Center identified as a "movement support" organization; that is, an organization that concentrated on working with political and social activists to use the courts to promote the activists' work. Cases were chosen to raise public awareness of an issue, generate media attention, and/or energize activists being harassed by local law enforcement in the South. In this regard, the Center differed from more traditional legal non-profits, such as the ACLU, which was more focused on bringing winnable cases in order to extend precedents and develop the law, as well as pursuing First Amendment issues.

In 1998, CCR merged with the National Emergency Civil Liberties Committee (NECLC), an organization originally formed in 1951 to advocate for the civil liberties embodied in the Bill of Rights of the US Constitution, notably the rights of free speech, religion, travel, and assembly.

Since 9/11, it has been known for bringing a variety of cases challenging the Bush administration's detention, extraordinary rendition, and interrogation practices in the so-called "war on terror". When its president Michael Ratner filed Rasul v. Bush in 2002, this was the first lawsuit to challenge President George W. Bush's wartime detentions at Guantanamo Bay Naval Base in Cuba in the early days of the "war on terror." "It was the first time in history that the Court had ruled against the president on behalf of alleged enemy fighters in wartime. And it was the first of four Supreme Court decisions between 2004 and 2008 that rejected President Bush's assertion of unchecked executive power in the "war on terror."

As of 2024^[update], CCR's issue areas are: abusive immigration practices, corporate human rights abuses, criminalizing dissent, discriminatory policing, drone killings, government surveillance, Guantanamo, LGBTQI persecution, mass incarceration, Muslim profiling, Palestinian solidarity, racial injustice, sexual and gender-based violence, and torture, war crimes, and militarism.

Dombrowski v. Pfister (1965): The CCR's first major case was a successful suit against the Louisiana Un-American Activities Committee to challenge the use of state anti-subversion laws to intimidate civil rights workers. CCR won the case in the Supreme Court, which ruled that such intimidation had a "chilling effect" on First Amendment rights and was therefore unconstitutional.