As Wells noted on Tuesday, the D.C. Circuit granted the government’s petition for rehearing en banc in Al-Bahlul v. United States. This is a very important development, as the full appeals court will now determine whether military commissions may … Read more »
The Ninth Circuit will hear oral argument in Al-Nashiri v. MacDonald on June 3. The civil appeal challenges the power of the Military Commissions’ Convening Authority to prosecute Al-Nashiri before a military tribunal at Guantanamo. Seeking to participate in the … Read more »
As Wells and Ben wrote yesterday, the D.C. Circuit granted the government’s petition for rehearing en banc in U.S. v. Bahlul. Today, the accused’s counsel asked the court to clarify instructions it issued in granting en banc review.
The D.C. … Read more »
Whoa. This is very big news—though what it means is far less clear.
The D.C. Circuit has granted the government’s petition for rehearing en banc in the military commission case of U.S. v. Al-Bahlul. It thus appears that a majority … Read more »
Yesterday, pursuant to Judge Thomas Hogan’s recent order, lawyers for habeas petitioner Musa’ab Omar al-Madhwani filed a brief addressing the district court’s jurisdiction to hear al-Madhwani’s emergency challenge to the conditions of his confinement at Guantanamo.
The detainee—who is … Read more »
The Guantánamo military commissions yesterday released—after a security review—a pair of important filings by the Office of the Chief Prosecutor (OCP), regarding the ongoing controversy over the conspiracy charges against the five 9/11 defendants. (For background, see our prior coverage … Read more »
As I discuss in my forthcoming book, International Law in the U.S. Legal System, regardless of whether customary international law has the status of self-executing federal law, it can play an important role in U.S. litigation. The invocation of … Read more »
Another noteworthy development in the conference version of the NDAA is section 1025. Think of this as a new direction in the congressionalization of detention operations in Afghanistan.
What do I mean by congressionalization? I admit I just made that … Read more »
I agree with much of what Jack says in his recent post about the counterterrorism issues likely to face President Obama in his second term. But there’s one aspect of how Jack frames the discussion that I disagree with somewhat. … Read more »
Steve, Ben, Jack, and Bobby have already posted some excellent thoughts on the DC Circuit’s decision in Hamdan II. I agree with many of them. In particular, I think Jack is right to suggest that, wholly … Read more »
In Law and the Long War, Ben described a cyclical process in which civil liberties and human rights NGOs would criticize the Bush administration’s detention standards and policies on GTMO, the Bush administration (under pressure from various fronts) would … Read more »
Over at Opinio Juris, Kevin Jon Heller offers the following objection to Haridimos Thravalos’s guest post last night on Hamdan, conspiracy, and history:
There is, however, a basic problem with Thravalos’ argument. He claims that “[t]he Hamdan plurality
I received this evening a most extraordinary guest post. It isn’t every day that someone sends me a memo outlining how a four-justice plurality of the Supreme Court got a key historical point wrong in a major case–much less does … Read more »
I don’t believe, as Steve suggested in his good response to my Slate essay on military commissions, that Obama’s continuation of military commissions is “a validation of . . . the policies of the (later part of the) Bush Administration.” … Read more »
Given Ben’s report on the oral argument, today’s fairly cryptic D.C. Circuit opinion in al-Zahrani v. Rodriguez, throwing out a damages suit arising out of the deaths of several inmates at Guantanamo, is hardly surprising. Writing for a … Read more »
As Jack and Steve have both noted, yesterday the Fourth Circuit issued its opinion in Lebron v. Rumsfeld, the appeal seeking reversal of a district court’s decision denying Jose Padilla declaratory and equitable relief against several current and … Read more »
Here is Part II of Peter Margulies’s reporting from AALS:
AALS Federal Courts Debate II: Military Commissions and Material Support
The lively federal courts panel at the American Association of Law Schools conference also sparked disagreement on trials in military
Oral arguments in Lebron v. Rumsfeld took place before the Fourth Circuit on Wednesday. The oral argument audio recording is available here, and my argument preview, with background on the case as well as links to the lower court … Read more »
Ever since the D.C. Circuit last week handed down its per curiam opinionlet in Al Warafi, I have been puzzling over this brief, unpublished order. I have begun to think it may be more important that I initially understood—and, … Read more »
I’m a little bit grouchy that the argument I made in this speech I keep linking to isn’t more a part of the debate over continuity and change between the Bush and Obama administrations than it is. It’s not just … Read more »
Over at the New York Times Room for Debate forum, Andy McCarthy, Orin Kerr, Diane Marie Aman, and I are engaged in an exchange of views about what lessons if any to draw from the Ghailani verdict. So far there’s … Read more »
(Benjamin Wittes & Robert Chesney)
Debra Burlingame, a co-director of Keep America Safe and the sister of September 11 pilot Charles Burlingame III, sent the following in response to our post on Ghailani yesterday:
I find your Ghailani verdict analysis
…is available here. It’s a long opinion, but the long and short of it is that the court did not credit Abebe’s claim that he was testifying voluntarily, and that this was dispositive from the point of view of … Read more »
I disagree with a great deal in this oped and don’t mean to pick every nit I could find in it. But it is worth answering some of Marc Thiessen’s major points, as they have a way of distilling and … Read more »
Friday, May 17, 2013
The Department of Justice’s Inspector General released an interim report on the Department’s handling of “known or suspected” terrorists who have entered the government’s witness protection program. The report found, among other things, that information on some program participants had not been turned over to no-fly list authorities; and, that two such people could not be located—though one… Read more »
