As part of our series examining 25 years of the war on terror, we hear from legendary local lawyer H. Candace Gorman. In 2006 Gorman suspended her law practice to handle pro bono habeas corpus petitions for two men being held at Guantanamo. After decades of litigation Gorman’s two clients are now free.
We recommend reading some of Gorman’s articles that chronicled her time representing men detained at Guantanamo ahead of the discussion. Below are a few:
Diary of a Guantánamo Attorney
H. Candace Gorman has her own law firm in Chicago Illinois concentrating in the area of Civil Rights. Gorman’s firm handles both individual and class action lawsuits for plaintiffs under the various civil rights statutes and under Illinois’ Torture Inquiry Relief Commission (TIRC). In 2004, Attorney Gorman argued and won a unanimous decision before the United States Supreme Court in Jones vs. R.R. Donnelley, 541 U.S. 369 (2004) in a difficult matter regarding the Statute of Limitations for § 1981 cases (a civil rights statute dating back to the U.S. civil war). In 2025, Attorney Gorman won the landmark Illinois Supreme Court Case of People v. Muhammad 2025 IL 130470 which clarified the definition of torture and the use of Brady evidence in assessing a claim of torture (but not as a freestanding constitutional claim) in proceedings under the TIRC Act.