Four years ago tomorrow, the Supreme Court ruled that Guantanamo detainees have a right to challenge the legality of their detention in federal court. The case, Boumediene v. Bush, was at the time hailed as a landmark separation-of-powers decision, routinely assigned as required reading in law schools now as part...

For all the circus-like aspects of the Khalid Sheikh Mohammed arraignment three weeks ago, one thing worked well: despite the fact that the proceedings were held down at Guantanamo, the first transcripts were posted on the Defense Department's military commission website even before the epic thirteen-hour session was over. Some...

In response to supposed legal restrictions on the interrogation of U.S. citizen and suspected Times Square SUV bomber Faisal Shahzad, Senator Lieberman today proposed a bill that would strip American citizenship from anyone who has "provid[ed] material support or resources to a foreign terrorist organization" or "engaged in,...

This morning the Supreme Court will hear argument in a case that asks whether political speech - writing an op-ed for, or teaching nonviolent conflict resolution to a group on the government's blacklists - can constitute a crime of terrorism carrying a fifteen year prison sentence.

The law...

You may recall that on this site, I posted a piece nine months ago castigating New York Times reporter Elizabeth "you can't say the President is lying" Bumiller for writing an absurd story claiming that 1 in 7 Guantanamo detainees had "returned" to terrorism. Put to one side...

Johnny Damon joins Enos Slaughter in the annals of great World Series baserunning plays tonight, stealing second and then third base on one play. One of the first baseball proverbs I recall was "in every game you see one thing you've never seen before," and after thirty years of idling...

Today saw the long awaited release of a report by the CIA's Office of Inspector General (the agency's internal watchdog) investigating the use of "enhanced interrogation techniques" (waterboarding and so forth) against detainees. The report's release had been delayed three times already, reportedly in response to CIA objections to...

The New York Times last night joined the parade of news organizations credulously reporting the utterly undocumented claims of Bush Defense Department holdover officials that large numbers of released former Guantanamo detainees had "returned to terrorism or militant activity."

The story indicates that the Times has seen a copy...

Astonishingly, today President Obama announced that, after two false starts, we are now about to embark on our third attempt at trying terrorism suspects in military commissions--a forum that has been proven not to work at delivering justice that is either swift or fair. Today's mindboggling announcement promised that the...

The problem: The nation has been on a war footing for years. Elected leaders believe it is full of sleeper cells of subversives. Officials in the capital decide that torture should be applied to detained subversives (whether to spread terror among their fellows, extract intelligence, or produce confessions is unclear)....

Sunday, January 11th, marked the seventh year that prisoners have been detained at Guantánamo. President-Elect Obama has promised that there will be no eighth anniversary. But judging from the level of chatter among the pundits this week, you might think that closing the base will require an army of law...

The New York Times reports, correctly, that Sen. Stevens can run for reelection despite his convicted felon status:

"Despite being a convicted felon, [Sen. Ted Stevens] is not required to drop out of the race or resign from the Senate. If he wins re-election, he can continue to hold his...

One month after the NSA's warrantless wiretapping program was disclosed by the New York Times in December 2005, we sued to put an end to it. In the two and a half years since then, an ACLU suit (brought on the same day as ours) was essentially dismissed on technicalities....

Salim Hamdan's 66-month sentence for providing material support for terrorism hardly marks closure to this first chapter in the sorry history of the Bush administration's military commissions. A slew of questions remain: Was his trial legal? Will he be freed once he serves his five remaining months? And, having floundered...

Attorney General Mukasey gave a speech at the American Enterprise Institute on Monday morning (repeated before Congress yesterday) in which he issued an "urgent" call for a third round of Congressional legislation to ensure that this administration will never have to explain to a federal court why they have...

In my last post, I gave in to the temptation to respond to John McCain's comments on Friday, calling the Supreme Court's Guantánamo decision "one of the worst decisions in the history of this country," by asking how it might compare to several other horribles--Dred Scott v. Sandford (the...

Here's John McCain's initial reaction to the Supreme Court's decision in the Guantánamo detainees case, Boumediene v. Bush, on Thursday, the day of the decision:

"It obviously concerns me . . . but it is a decision the Supreme Court has made. Now we need to move forward. As you...

Six and a half years ago, we at the Center for Constitutional Rights brought the first case in federal court on behalf of detainees held at Guantanamo. At first, the administration successfully argued that the detainees were in a legal black hole, without any right of access to the...

Well, it's been a few months and we're still waiting for a decision from the Supreme Court in the Guantánamo detainee cases. But things are happening on other fronts. For starters, the Harold and Kumar movie -- Harold and Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay -- is out. Here's my two...

Today marks six years since the detention camp at the Guantánamo Bay Naval Station was opened. The first 20 men arrived on January 11, 2002. Almost 800 men have been held there since then; around 500 have been sent home; only five have seen formal charges under the Military Commissions...