WASHINGTON, Jan. 25 (UPI) -- The Sept. 11 terror attacks were attacks against the rule of law, Justice Anthony Kennedy said at the Supreme Court Friday, and need a "legal response."
The attacks were also an intensely personal experience for the justice. All three of his grown children, two sons and a daughter, live in New York with their families.
One son lives within three blocks of the World Trade Center, and after two hijacked airplanes struck the center's towers had to cover his 18-month-old son with his shirt to run out of the disaster area.
Another son, a bond trader who lost many friends, called the justice at the Supreme Court to tell him about the attack in its first few minutes. "Dad, turn on the TV," he told his father. "It's worse than Antietam," where one in four soldiers were killed, wounded or missing in the worst carnage of the Civil War.
In Washington, the crash of the hijacked jet into the Pentagon, just over the horizon in Virginia, rattled the windows of the justice's chambers on the second floor of the Supreme Court.
Kennedy spoke about his experiences and his need to do something during a news conference in the Supreme Court pressroom Friday -- a highly unusual event; like the other justices, Kennedy almost never meets with the media.
The 65-year-old justice told reporters he felt what everyone all of us felt when he saw what was happening: "fear for my children, disbelief, anger."
But beyond those reactions, "I was concerned about what I was hearing (later), particularly in some of the foreign countries," Kennedy said. The justice was in China during the October break at the court, more than a month after the attacks, meeting with Chinese students and government officials. Kennedy said he did not feel much empathy for America's tragedy from either group.
What disturbed him even more back home was an article in his morning newspaper about the reaction of students at an Islamic school in the Maryland suburbs of Washington.
"The kids had just no empathy" for those who were killed, Kennedy said, "no concern."
The justice said he also marked what seemed to be a trend in the United States to explain away the reasons behind the attacks, "but that just shades into excuse."
"Just from the standpoint of basic morality, there was no excuse for this," Kennedy said of the terror. After all, there are "some constants, or fixed principles in law and civilization."
In response, Kennedy has conceived the "Dialogue on Freedom" program as an American Bar Association initiative in the wake of the Sept. 11 terror attacks.
Under the initiative, judges and lawyers across the country will go into high schools and lead structured discussions with teenagers about American democracy and values.
The justice and first lady Laura Bush, joined by ABA president Robert Hirshon, will participate in the first "Dialogue" Monday at Washington's School Without Walls Senior High School.
Kennedy said the ABA approached the White House about getting some administration representative to help in the effort, and association officials were surprised and delighted when told the first lady wanted to participate.
The program will be run by the ABA once it's kicked off -- "I told them I have a day job," Kennedy said.
The ABA will provide resource materials for dialogues and will set up a Web site with an online resource guide for the parents of younger children.
The ABA will also sponsor dialogues in the nation's high schools, led by judges and lawyers, and the development of broadcast-quality videotapes which feature young people participating in the program.
An ABA prospectus describes the purpose of Kennedy's program:
"The terrorist attacks on Sept. 11 underscore the necessity for serious and constant discussions about American civic values and their compatibility with other cultures. Through dialogues in our nation's classrooms, this initiative will enable students to engage in discussion of our shared values as Americans in relation to our identities, our civic traditions and diverse world cultures. Our values are held in common with many other countries of the world. The underlying theme of the special initiative is whether these values can be seen as offering hope, not a threat, to the rest of the world."
