Law Commons^™

The Process Due Indefinitely Detained Citizens, Carl W. Tobias

Law Faculty Publications

A very controversial feature of the "war on terror" is the scope of the power which Congress has granted President George W. Bush to designate suspected terrorists enemy combatants and indefinitely detain them. The United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit has most fully, if not clearly, resolved this question.

The United States incarcerated two citizens with little process for more than a year in the Charleston and Norfolk naval brigs. The first litigated three habeas corpus petitions before the Fourth Circuit and a fourth to the Supreme Court before the government released him. The second convinced a …