Harry Graver is a second-year student at Harvard Law School and a graduate of Yale University. He has previously interned in the Office of the Chief Prosecutor in the Office of Military Commissions.
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President Donald Trump quietly signed the bipartisan Anti-Terrorism Clarification Act of 2018 (ATCA) into law on Oct. 3. Described as a “carefully balanced approach to better ensure victims’ access to compensation and hold supporters of terrorism accountable” by its principal author, Sen.
The United States has held Asadullah Haroon Gul, also known as al-Afghani, at Guantanamo Bay for 11 years. In an Oct. 10 court filing, as part of litigation arising out of al-Afghani’s 2016 petition for habeas corpus, the government amended the legal basis for Afghani’s detention.
On Friday, in a 7–2 decision written by Justice Kagan, the Supreme Court held in Ortiz v. United States that Judge Martin Mitchell could simultaneously serve as a judge on the Court of Military Commission Review (CMCR) and the Air Force’s Court of Criminal Appeals (CCA) without violating Congress’s general “dual-officeholding ban” on military officers taking up civilian offices.
On Tuesday, the Supreme Court heard oral argument in Dalmazzi v. United States.
The new year has not, so far, seemed to have brought with it a new zenith for U.S.-Pakistan relations. On Jan. 1, President Donald Trump tweeted that Pakistan has offered “nothing but lies & deceit” in exchange for American aid, and “give[s] safe haven to the terrorists we hunt in Afghanistan, with little help.” Soon after, on Jan.
This is the first in a series of posts on the Classified Information Procedures Act (CIPA). CIPA is a critical law for national security prosecutions: It establishes a number of key procedures that facilitate a balance between the fundamental rights of defendants in criminal trials and the government’s interests in keeping classified information out of the wrong hands. This post provides an overview of CIPA, some of its principal legal disputes, and a sense of how CIPA has been recently applied.
The Supreme Court’s October term 2017 may be shaping up to be the year that finally brings some answers to several enduring questions surrounding the military commissions. On Thursday, the court granted certiorari in three cases–Dalmazzi v. United States, consolidated with Cox v.