Latest in D.C. Circuit
This Wednesday at 9:30 a.m., a three-judge panel of the D.C. Circuit (Rogers, Tatel and Griffith, JJ.) will hold a rare August argument session to hear the latest petition for a writ of mandamus from the Guantánamo military commissions.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit today handed down an opinion dismissing a suit filed by the family members of individuals reportedly killed in a U.S. drone strike in Yemen in 2012, which the plaintiffs allege was conducted in violation of domestic and international law. Though the court dismissed the case as presenting a non-justiciable political question, Judge Janice Rogers Brown's concurrence presents a strong criticism of the existing oversight regime for targeted killing.
The opinion is available in full below.
Here is the brief for Captain Smith that was filed yesterday afternoon in the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, along with the joint appendix. The case will be ready for argument later this spring. The brief represents a great deal of new research into the fundamental issues by David Remes, myself and a team of Yale law students.
The brief was submitted to the D.C. Circuit yesterday, by the Guantanamo detainee's lawyers. We thus await decision from the appeals court as to whether it will order en banc rehearing in this long-running military commissions case.
It almost certainly won't, in my view—but we'll see soon enough.
On June 12, a three-judge panel of the D.C. Circuit handed down its decision in the most recent iteration of Al Bahlul v. United States, vacating defendant Ali Hamza Suliman al Bahlul’s conviction for inchoate conspiracy. Al Bahlul’s other convictions had previously been vacated by the D.C.