Anti-torture activists will be on hand this afternoon at Drake University’s Knapp Center in Des Moines to protest U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice Roberts.

Cheif Justice John Roberts

Chief Justice John Roberts

Roberts will deliver the Dwight D. Opperman Lecture in Constitutional Law today at 3 p.m. Protesters, organized by the Des Moines Catholic Worker Community, plan to gather outside the Knapp Center, 2525 Forest Ave., Des Moines, with signs and banners at 2 p.m.

The group is angry with Roberts’ dissenting opinion in the case of Boumediene v. Bush, which found that foreign terrorism suspects held at Guantanamo Bay and other US prisons have rights under the Constitution to challenge their detention in U.S. civilian courts.

Roberts disagreed with Justice Anthony Kennedy, who writing for the Court, said, “The laws and Constitution are designed to survive, and remain in force, in extraordinary times” In his dissent, Roberts characterized the military commissions established by the Bush Administration that accepted testimony gained under torture and the use of evidence kept secret from the accused, “the most generous set of procedural protections ever afforded aliens detained by this country as enemy combatants.”

Today’s lecture is free and open to the public.