Rebel With a Cause

Bonifaz is no stranger to public service law.

From his days as a student at the Law School, where he took on the faculty for its lack of diversity, to his founding of the National Voting Rights Institute, Bonifaz has devoted his career to serving the public interest.

Bonifaz and about a dozen other students brought suit against the school for harming their education by failing to hire a diverse faculty.

Although they were denied standing by the court, the effort was important, said Climenko Professor of Law Charles J. Ogletree, who taught Bonifaz.

“The suit failed, but there were two important consequences: The Court applauded their advocacy as representing the highest standards of professionalism though they were students rather than trained lawyers. It also generated raw dialogue in the faculty,” Ogletree said.

But despite his suit, Bonifaz said HLS wasn’t all bad; he praised the public interest law advising at the school and applauded the concrete steps that have been taken since his days as a student to increase diversity among the faculty.

And the work of professors like Ogletree, he commented, helped him pursue his interest in public service even in the corporate culture of HLS.

An interest in campaign finance reform also stemmed from his career at the Law School; Bonifaz did thesis work in the subject and founded the National Voting Rights Institute, devoted to litigating campaign finance reform, two years after graduation.

Bonifaz took the Bush case under the auspices of his father’s firm, which normally takes on cases dealing with international environmental and human rights law.

The firm developed the Bush suit because of human rights implications for the soldiers and their families involved, Bonifaz said. He initially approached plaintiffs for the case and more signed on as the suit gained momentum.

“My only son is being sent to war with no debate and no dissent,” said Susan Schumann, a plaintiff in the case and the mother of a Marine. “I was asked by John to join the suit. I talked to my son about it, and he said, ‘If I am a soldier, it’s to defend the constitution and your right to speak out.’”

Tilting at Windmills

Bonifaz’ suit follows several unsuccessful attempts to take the ability to deploy troops out of the President’s hands.

The 1990 action against the Gulf War, brought by 54 members of Congress, was dismissed because the court found that less than ten percent of the legislature was not representative of the whole body.