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Boumediene V. Bush And The New Common Law Of Habeas, Baher Azmy

Baher Azmy

In Boumediene v. Bush, the Supreme Court issued yet another sharp rebuke of the Bush Administration’s wartime detention practices. In ruling that the protections of the Suspension Clause reach extraterritorially to Guantanamo (and perhaps beyond) and striking down the jurisdiction-stripping provision of the Military Commissions Act of 2006, the Court went significantly farther than had the triad of prior enemy combatant cases – Hamdi v. Rumsfeld, Rasul v. Bush and Hamdan v. Rumsfeld. Indeed, for the first time in its history, the Court invalidated the collaborative efforts of the political branches during wartime.

In so doing, Boumediene elevated the judiciary …