Sanctuary on The Faultline

by Jim Corbett

Few of us give the common law a second thought. We formerly used the term in relation to marriage... [however], we rarely give common law any thought at all.

We may be surprised, then, to find:

-that common law is alive and well in the practice of sanctuary;
-that it grows out of the conscience of the community;
-that it is the source in which all law is based;
-that the State does not own the law;
-that common law is the instrument through which constitutions and government laws are corrected;
-that it is more effective than the police or courts.

And we may be elated to learn that it can blunt the power of war.

Jim Corbett has elucidated these insights, and others of equal importance, in this careful statement describing his experience and that of others in the Tucson refugee support group. I have not read a more meaningful work.

- Robert Schutz, Editor

28 pages, Paperback

First published June 1, 1988

About the author

Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the GoodReads database with this name. See this thread for more information.

James A. "Jim" Corbett (born Casper, Wyoming, October 8, 1933 - died near Benson, Arizona, August 2, 2001) was an American rancher, writer, Quaker, philosopher, and human rights activist and a co-founder of the Sanctuary movement.

The son of a teacher and a substitute teacher, Corbett was descended from European-American settlers and Blackfoot Indians, and spent part of his childhood living on an Indian reservation. He graduated from Colgate University and got his master's degree in philosophy from Harvard. He took up ranching in Wyoming and Arizona and continued to herd goats and cows until his death and did research into beekeeping and goat husbandry. He also was librarian and philosophy instructor at Cochise College in Arizona.

In the early 1960s he converted to Quakerism and became an opponent of the Vietnam War. In 1981, while living in Arizona, he became aware of refugees fleeing from civil wars in El Salvador and Guatemala who were crossing the border from Mexico into Arizona and seeking political asylum. At the time, very few of these refugees were receiving protection, as the U.S. government was funding the governments of the countries from which the refugees were fleeing, and immigration judges were instructed by the State Department to deny most asylum petitions. Together with other human rights activists, Corbett started a small movement in Arizona to assist these people coming across the border, by providing assistance, transportation, and shelter. Under the auspices of churches and Quaker meetings, and citing the religious precedent of protecting people feeling persecution, as well as the Geneva conventions barring countries from deporting refugees back to countries in the middle of civil wars (non-refoulement), the activists found support for their work in congregations in Arizona and Chicago, Illinois, as well as south Texas and eventually other communities in many states, including California, Pennsylvania, Vermont, Washington, and others. This movement, which became known as the Sanctuary movement eventually involved over 500 congregations, and helped hundreds if not thousands of refugees find freedom in the U.S. The Sanctuary movement was one of the most famous examples of civil initiative in the 1980s. Corbett and nine others around Tucson, Arizona were arrested for their work, as it violated U.S. immigration laws, although he was eventually acquitted. He continued to assist refugees and to write on various topics of social justice.

Corbett was among the most intellectual of the movement's proponents, and he wrote and published widely on the topic.