Detention & Guantanamo
Latif Cert Petition Filed
The cert petition in Latif has been filed. So far, only the questions presented have been released publicly. They are as follows:
Latest in Latif v. Obama
The cert petition in Latif has been filed. So far, only the questions presented have been released publicly. They are as follows:
Peter Margulies of Roger Williams University School of Law has sent in two accounts of panel discussions at the annual meeting of the American Association of Law Schools. Here is the first:
Daphne Eviatar of Human Rights First writes in with the following comments on Latif and the detention provisions of the NDAA:
Sabin Willett, who represented the Guantanamo Uighurs in Parhat and Kiyemba, writes in with the following comments about Latif:
Over at the Empty Wheel blog, Marcy Wheeler has a very impressive set of speculations regarding what the mysterious Report at issue in Latif (which I discuss at length here) might be. Here's her bottom line:
The D.C. Circuit strongly disfavors en banc review. For longstanding cultural reasons, the court avoids en bancs whenever possible. This is generally a good thing. En bancs can be ugly; they stress a court's collegiality. The Latif case, however, should probably overcome the court's allergy to en bancs. I don't know whether Latif's lawyers will ask the full court to rehear the matter.
The more I study the D.C. Circuit decision in Latif, the more important I think it is, and the more regrettable I think it probably is. I'm going to spread this out over two posts. In this one, which is going to be very long, I'm going to describe in some depth the arguments in both the majority opinion by Judge Janice Rogers Brown and the dissenting opinion by Judge David Tatel.
Here's my question: Why has there been virtually no press coverage of the Latif decision? Other than this article on CNN's web page, which actually ignores the aspect of the case that makes it jurisprudentially important, a search on Google News reveals none (other than Lawfare stuff). Memo to the press: This case is important.
Peter Margulies of Roger Williams Law School writes in with the following critique of the Latif decision and praise of Judge David Tatel's dissent. While I don't agree with every aspect of this analysis, I agree with a great deal of it:
I have now read the entirety of Latif, and I am--quite honestly--not entirely sure what to make of it. For one thing, the redactions are extensive, far more so than in the normal D.C. Circuit habeas case. They involve matters central to the disposition of the case, and they thus make much of the dispute between Judges Janice Rogers Brown and Karen LeCraft Henderson, on one side, and David Tatel, on the other, more than a little bit difficult to discern.