Enemy combatant

Abstract: The media and public fascination with who is detained at Guantanamo and why has been fueled in large measure by the refusal of the Government, on the grounds of national security, to provide much information about the individuals and the charges against them. The information available to date has been anecdotal and erratic, drawn largely from interviews with the few detainees who have been released or from statements or court filings by their attorneys in the pending habeas corpus proceedings that the Government has not declared "classified." This Report is the first effort to provide a more detailed picture of who the Guantanamo detainees are, how they ended up there, and the purported bases for their enemy combatant designation. The data in this Report is based almost entirely upon the United States Government's own documents. This Report provides a window into the Government's success detaining only those that the President has called "the worst of the worst." Among the findings of the Report: 1. Fifty-five percent (55%) of the detainees are not determined to have committed any hostile acts against the United States or its coalition allies. 2. Only 8% of the detainees were characterized as al Qaeda fighters. Of the remaining detainees, 40% have no definitive connection with al Qaeda at all and 18% are have no definitive affiliation with either al Qaeda or the Taliban. 3. The Government has detained numerous persons based on mere affiliations with a large number of groups that, in fact, are not on the Department of Homeland Security terrorist watchlist. Moreover, the nexus between such a detainee and such organizations varies considerably. Eight percent are detained because they are deemed "fighters for;" 30% considered "members of;" a large majority - 60% - are detained merely because they are "associated with" a group or groups the Government asserts are terrorist organizations. For 2% of the prisoners, a nexus to any terrorist group is not identified by the Government. 4. Only 5% of the detainees were captured by United States forces. 86% of the detainees were arrested by either Pakistan or the Northern Alliance and turned over to United States custody. This 86% of the detainees captured by Pakistan or the Northern Alliance were handed over to the United States at a time in which the United States offered large bounties for capture of suspected enemies. 5. Finally, the population of persons deemed not to be enemy combatants - mostly Uighers - are in fact accused of more serious allegations than a great many persons still deemed to be enemy combatants.

Abstract: This compact reference book contains the case articles from the prize-winning Oxford Companion to the United States Supreme Court. This new edition of the Guide will contain more than 450 entries on major Supreme Court cases, including 53 new entries on the latest landmark rulings. Among the new entries are United States v. American Library Association (censorship of internet content), United States v. Armstrong (selective prosecution), Atkins v. Virginia (executing the mentally retarded violates the Eighth Amendment's ban on cruel and unusual punishments), Boy Scouts v. Dale (freedom of association), Bush v. Gore (equal protection and recount), Nixon v. United States (political questions inappropriate for judicial resolution), , Gonzales v. Carhart and Gonzales v. Planned Parenthood Federation of America (abortion), Gonzales v. Raich, (Congress can proscribe all use of marijuana under commerce power), Morse v. Frederick (student's free speech), and Rumsfeld v. Forum for Academic and Institutional Rights (First Amendment and Solomon Amendment). Four decisions-Hamdi v. Bush, Hamdan v. Rumsfeld, Rasu v. Bush, and Rumsfeld v. Padila-will be considered in a single essay entitled "Enemy Combatant Cases." In addition to these new cases, both front and backmatter materials have been revised, including the Introduction, the Directory of Contributors, Case Index, Topical Index, and Appendix Two has been revised to note changes in the Supreme Court, including the death of Chief Justice Rehnquist and the retirement of Justice O'Connor, and their replacement by Chief Justice Roberts and Justice Alito.

Abstract: Six years after the 9/11 attacks, U.S. policy concerning the detention of alleged terrorists remains legally uncertain and politically contested. Neither the criminal nor the military model in its traditional guise can easily meet the central legal challenge of modern terrorism: the legitimate preventive incapacitation of uniformless terrorists who have the capacity to inflict mass casualties and enormous economic harms and who thus must be stopped before they act. The traditional criminal model, with its demanding substantive and procedural requirements, is the most legitimate institution for long-term incapacitation. But it has difficulty achieving preventive incapacitation. Traditional military detention, by contrast, combines detention criteria and procedural flexibility that makes it relatively easy to incapacitate. But because the enemy in this war operates clandestinely, and because the war has no obvious end, this model runs an unusually high risk of erroneous long-term detentions, and thus in its traditional guise lacks adequate legitimacy. The main goal of this essay is to show how the two systems have moved to rectify their inadequacies, and to some extent have converged on procedural and substantive criteria for detention. During the past five years the military detention system has instituted new rights and procedures designed to prevent erroneous detentions, and some courts have urged detention criteria more oriented toward individual conduct than was traditionally the case. At the same time, the criminal justice system has diminished some traditional procedural safeguards in terrorism trials, and has quietly established the capacity for convicting terrorists based on something very close to associational status. Each detention model, in short, has become more like the other. Despite these changes, the post-convergence status quo may prove unsustainable with respect to military detention. Courts may mandate change. Congress may pursue reform as a matter of policy. Both may occur. The prospect of change, in any event, has given rise to a debate regarding the proper calibration of the non-criminal detention model. In hopes of informing that debate, we conclude by drawing on the lessons of convergence to identify the specific questions that would-be reformers must address with regard to both substantive detention criteria and procedural safeguards, highlighting the range of policy choices available and the extent to which the convergence process has paved the way toward consensus on at least some difficult issues.

Abstract: This article examines the appropriate and inappropriate role of "preventive detention" in responding to terrorist threats. It offers a constitutional jurisprudence of preventive detention, maintaining that absent a showing that dangerous behaviour cannot be addressed through criminal prosecution, preventive detention is unconstitutional. But criminal prosecution is not always a realistic option, and in those circumstances, preventive detention, carefully circumscribed and meticulously safeguarded by procedural protections, may be permissible. Familiar examples of accepted preventive detention regimes include civil commitment of dangerous persons who because of a mental disability cannot be held criminally responsible, and detention of enemy soldiers in a traditional war, whose hostile activities cannot be criminalized so long as they respect the laws of war.The article argues that the contemporary debate over preventive detention often disregards the fact that US law already authorizes preventive detention in a variety of circumstances - as indeed do the laws of virtually every other nation. Thus, the proper question is not whether we should have preventive detention at all, but under what circumstances and pursuant to what protections. Unlike torture, preventive detention is not susceptible to an absolute prohibition.I address the use and abuse of preventive detention since 9/11, and suggest a variety of reforms to forestall abuses in the future, particularly in the aftermath of another terrorist attack. I advocate reform of immigration law, the material witness law, and the "enemy combatant" detention authority. With respect to the latter, I find unsatisfactory the proposals of both those who call for a new preventive detention statute addressed to "suspected terrorists," such as Profs. Neal Katyal and Jack Goldsmith, and those who insist that the United States must either "try or release" everyone at Guantanamo (and presumably Bagram Air Force Base), as have several human rights organizations.Instead, I suggest that a detention regime carefully restricted to persons engaged against us in the armed conflict with al Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan would be consistent with the Constitution and international law, provided it included meticulous procedures designed to afford detainees a meaningful opportunity to defend themselves, and regular review of their status to ensure that they are detained no longer than necessary. The parameters of such a regime should be set forth by Congress, not improvised by the Executive. And the predicate for detention should be involvement in an ongoing armed conflict, not terrorism. Involvement in an armed conflict has long been a recognized justification for preventive detention, here and around the world. Terrorism, by contrast, is a crime, not different in kind from many other serious crimes, and can and should be addressed through the criminal justice system. However, where an act of terrorism leads to an armed conflict - as has happened only once in the 200-year history of the United States - the laws of war and the Constitution should permit carefully circumscribed preventive detention for the duration of the conflict.