Law Commons^™

Mohammed Jawad And The Failure Of The Guantanamo Military Commissions, David J. Frakt

David J Frakt

In order to justify outrageous treatment of detainees at Guantanamo during the early years of the “Global War on Terror” it was necessary to portray the detainees as hardened terrorist criminals. But it was not enough to simply label them as such; the Bush Administration knew that in order to maintain popular support for their detention policies, they would have to convict a critical mass of the detainees in some sort of legal proceedings.

The problem for the Bush Administration was that few of the detainees were actually involved in any terrorist criminal activity. Fewer still had committed any offenses …

Guantanamo As A 'Legal Black Hole': A Base For Expanding Space, Markets, And Culture, Ernesto Hernandez-Lopez

Ernesto A. Hernandez

Guantanamo appears as a "legal black hole" especially when examining detainee rights, but in reality empire purposefully creates these jurisdictional anomalies. To further U.S. interests overseas in 1903, base jurisdiction was crafted as anomalous between Cuban sovereignty and American occupation. For the 174 still detained, it's still a black hole. After four Supreme Court decisions, anomaly continues to pervade detention litigation. Functional tests for extraterritorial constitutional rights, habeas proceedings, and the unclear fate of Uighur-detainees all suffer from doctrinal obfuscation. Detainees rights, or lack of, are just one aspect of anomaly. Empire's dynamic forces produced these ambiguities. Guantanamo represents American …

Faith-Based Torture, Ali Khan

Ali Khan

This Essay focuses on faith-based torture perpetrated against Muslim detainees, torture that was crudely designed, only minimally seeking security-sensitive information. However, anti-Islamic torture - which has profoundly offended Muslim communities throughout the world - reaffirms the dark side of U.S. government policies that periodically single out populations, domestic and foreign, and subject them to cruelty. This dark side is evidenced by the degradation of Native Americans, enslavement of Western Africans, internment of Japanese-Americans, and slaughtering of the Vietnamese. More specifically, anti-Islamic torture has undermined what were sincere and substantial efforts of many American institutions to promote religious freedom at home …

Bringing The Spies In From The Cold: Legal Cosmopolitanism, And Intelligence Under The Laws Of War, Peyton A. Cooke

Peyton A. Cooke

Recently, as never before, intelligence operations have come under international humanitarian law. The Supreme Court has handed down the Hamdan and Boumediene decisions; President Obama has required the CIA and other interrogators to abide by Geneva Conventions Common Article 3 standards for all interrogations; district courts have declared stringent law of war criteria for overseas detentions; the Executive has applied the laws of war to terrorist targeting; and the private groups which have initiated this litigation, and pressed for these changes, continue to work for even more reform. This paper addresses the roots and effects of such changes. It begins …

Guantanamo As Outside And Inside The U.S.: Why Is A Base A Legal Anomaly?, Ernesto A. Hernandez-Lopez

Ernesto A. Hernandez

Guantanamo’s historic role in empire explains why the base remains anomalously inside and outside US jurisdiction. Produced by historic empire, the base’s legal anomaly permits for detaining over 150 men, eight years after detentions began and over a year and half after President Obama ordered detentions to end. Referring to Alejandro Colás’s definition, empire is comprised of space (i.e. territorial expansion without any limit), markets (i.e. wealth-creation through market protection), and culture (i.e. notions of cultural superiority). The Platt Amendment (1902-34) and the Insular Cases (1901-20) point to law’s role in a base for empire’s space, i.e. the law of …