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Full-Text Articles in Law

Punish Or Surveil, Diane Marie Amann Apr 2007

Punish Or Surveil, Diane Marie Amann

Scholarly Works

This Article endeavors to paint a fuller picture of previous practice and present options than is often present in debates about the United States' antiterrorism measures. It begins by describing practices in place before the campaign launched after September 11, 2001. The Article focuses on punishment, the first prong of the policy long used to combat threats against the United States. Ordinary civilian and military courts stood ready to punish persons found guilty at public trials that adhered to fairness standards, and national security interests not infrequently were advanced through such courts. That is not to say that courts were …


The Cost Of Confusion: Resolving Ambiguities In Detainee Treatment, Kenneth Anderson Jan 2007

The Cost Of Confusion: Resolving Ambiguities In Detainee Treatment, Kenneth Anderson

Reports

This short policy paper considers US counterterrorism policy with particular attention to treatment of detainees in matters of challenging detention, interrogation, trial of detainees, and release. It analyzes the existing US war on terror and considers future policies that would address both national security concerns and human rights/civil liberties concerns. The paper is written by two experts and advocates in counterterrorism-related issues, coming from the center right and the center left in American politics, as part of a project of the Stanley Foundation, Bridging the Foreign Policy Divide, which publishes papers by pairs of experts coming from conservative and progressive …


Hamdan As An Assertion Of Judicial Power, Jana B. Singer Jan 2007

Hamdan As An Assertion Of Judicial Power, Jana B. Singer

Faculty Scholarship

In Hamdan v Rumsfeld, the Supreme Court rebuffed the Bush administration’s initial attempt to use Military Commissions created by Executive Order to try detainees held at Guantanamo Bay. The Court ruled that the President, acting alone, lacked the authority to employ the Commissions because their structure and procedure violated both the Uniform Code of Military Justice and the Geneva Conventions. Most academic commentators have viewed the Hamdan decision as primarily about the limits of executive power. On this view, the central constitutional problem in Hamdan was that the Executive had acted unilaterally in an area where the Constitution required the …


The Expressive Value Of Prosecuting And Punishing Terrorists: Hamdan, The Geneva Conventions, And International Criminal Law, Mark A. Drumbl Jan 2007

The Expressive Value Of Prosecuting And Punishing Terrorists: Hamdan, The Geneva Conventions, And International Criminal Law, Mark A. Drumbl

Scholarly Articles

In Hamdan v. Rumsfeld, the United States Supreme Court ruled that the military commissions that had been proposed by the Executive to prosecute a small number of detainees captured in the 'war on terror' could not proceed. In response to the Hamdan decision, Congress enacted a new military commission structure in the 2006 Military Commissions Act (MCA), which President Bush signed on October 17, 2006. The MCA establishes military commissions for aliens classified as unlawful enemy combatants. It lists the crimes chargeable by such commissions. The MCA also amends domestic legislation - for example, the War Crimes Act - initially …


The Rule Of Law And The Military Commission, Stephen J. Ellmann Jan 2007

The Rule Of Law And The Military Commission, Stephen J. Ellmann

Articles & Chapters

This essay examines the underlying foundations of the Supreme Court's decision in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld. After laying out many of the features of the conflicting positions taken by the majority and dissents in the case, the article argues that the majority's judgment was by no means determined by the plain meaning of the statutory provisions at issue, nor even by the Steel Seizure framework of overlapping zones of executive and legislative power. Instead, three factors deserve special emphasis. The first is the Court's effort to protect, and catalyze, Congressional authority. The second is the Court's understanding of its own role …


Chasing 'Enemy Combatants' And Circumventing International Law: A License For Sanctioned Abuse, Peter J. Honigsberg Dec 2006

Chasing 'Enemy Combatants' And Circumventing International Law: A License For Sanctioned Abuse, Peter J. Honigsberg

Peter J Honigsberg

In 1944, in Korematsu v. United States, the Supreme Court made a major error in judgment. It ruled that the executive may forcibly remove over 110,000 Japanese Americans from their homes and relocate them in American detention camps. In two recent Supreme Court cases, Hamdi v. Rumsfeld and Hamdan v. Rumsfeld, the court made similar errors in judgment by accepting the administration's term "enemy combatant." The Supreme Court's errors were compounded when Congress passed the Military Commissions Act of 2006 in October, 2006, statutorily defining the term enemy combatant for the first time. By acknowledging the term enemy combatant, the …


Military Commissions Act Of 2006, Arsalan M. Suleman Dec 2006

Military Commissions Act Of 2006, Arsalan M. Suleman

Arsalan Suleman

On October 17, 2006, President Bush signed into law the Military Commissions Act of 2006 (MCA). Congress passed the MCA to authorize the trial by military commissions of detained terrorism suspects after the Supreme Court's decision in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld invalidated the military commissions previously established pursuant to a 2001 military order from President Bush. The MCA adds chapter 47A to title 10 of the U.S. Code to give statutory authorization for the military commissions. This Recent Development explores some of the more controversial aspects of the MCA, especially those sections that respond to the Court's Hamdan decision. The note …