Latest in Hamdi
It had to happen sooner or later: an actual slow week for national security law! Ugh! Well, time to make lemonade from the lemons. A slow week in NSL news means that we can take a run at a format that we originally expected to be a mainstay for the show: a deep-dive into a single significant development.
On Dec. 11, the United States District Court for the District of Columbia heard arguments in ACLU v. Mattis on the question whether the ACLU should be permitted to represent a United States citizen who is currently being detained as an enemy combatant in Iraq.
The American Civil Liberties Union has filed a John Doe habeas petition on behalf of the still-not-identified American citizen the U.S. military is holding as an enemy combatant in Iraq (for background, see here). The case is Doe v. Mattis, No. 17-cv-02069, and it was filed in federal district court in D.C. Here is my preliminary assessment.