The trailblazing human rights attorney Peter Weiss died November 3 at the age of 99. Weiss served on the board of the Center for Constitutional Rights for nearly five decades, where he worked to end South African apartheid and the Vietnam War, fought for nuclear disarmament and sought justice for victims of the U.S.-backed Contras in 1980s Nicaragua. He pioneered using the 1789 Alien Tort Statute in human rights cases. He also represented the family of U.S. journalist and human rights activist Charles Horman in a case against Henry Kissinger and others, after Horman was disappeared and killed in Chile soon after the U.S.-backed 1973 coup.
“He never ceased to push for a more just system, a more equitable system, along with his extraordinary wife Cora Weiss,” says Peter Kornbluh, senior analyst at the National Security Archive. “There’s not enough words to describe how important Peter was to the progressive movement, to human rights, over these last decades.”
