Judge John Bates has granted the government's motion to dismiss in Al-Maqaleh et al v. Gates---in which detainees at Bagram Airfield in Afghanistan had petitioned for writs of habeas corpus.

Jonathan Witmer-Rich of the Cleveland-Marshall College of Law writes in with these comments on Hamdan II: Reflecting on Hamdan II, I wonder if the court really responded to the government’s opening argum...

Prosecutor Clay Trivett opens his argument regarding AE36 with a list.  On it are Presidents Obama and Bush, Joe Biden and Senator Graham.  If the defense got what they wanted, Trivett says, all of these...

Steve, Ben, Jack, and Bobby have already posted some excellent thoughts on the DC Circuit's decision in Hamdan II.  I agree with many of them.

Judge Pohl’s at the bench.  It seems the morning will be a court-and-counsel only affair: none of the five accused have materialized.  That means a quick appearance by Robert Swann; some testimony, from ...

I was going to post this morning about my bewilderment at President Obama's comments last night about "legal architecture" for the War on Terror, but as Jack noted, Josh Gerstein has already done so. And...

The President had this to say about issues of interest to readers of the blog: Obama: There are some things that we haven't gotten done.  I still want to close Guantanamo.  We haven’t been able to get th...

Rain falls outside our little CCTV facility here at Fort Meade, as we come to the week's fifth and final day of hearings in the 9/11 case.  We expect the gavel bang at 9 p.m., and will start coverage then.

I saw the movie Argo last weekend. It's an excellent film, and as readers likely know already, its subject is a real covert action. After seeing it, I became curious about how accurate a portrayal of the...

Bugs are Cheryl Bormann’s problem, along with mold and mildew---though perhaps, it seems, less of a problem than before.  She reports that the parties have settled their dispute about sanitary conditions...

James Connell III, lawyer for Ali Abdul Aziz Ali, has our biggest ticket item for the day: he wants a declaration regarding the Constitution’s application to military commission proceedings at Guantanamo...

The Washington Post reports : The Center for Constitutional Rights, a private group which has been deeply involved in detainee issues, praised Tuesday’s decision but said it does not go far enough.

The screen comes alive with James Connell III---who responds to the court’s pending inquiry, regarding material that isn’t subject to the government’s information privilege but that still comes within th...

Our fourth day commences, as expected, with presence matters. Prosecutor Robert Swann discharges what appears to be his recurring duty: establishing that the day’s two no-shows, Mustafa al-Hawsawi and R...

Its Thursday, October 18---the fourth in this week's five-day hearing in United States v. Mohammed et al.  The proceedings are set to resume shortly.

I somehow missed the D.C. Circuit habeas appeal of Guantanamo detainee Abdul Qader Ahmen Hussein, whose case is to be argued today. It appeals this decision from a year ago by U.S. District Judge Reggie ...

Peter Margulies of Roger Williams School of Law writes in with the following comments on the Hamdan decision:

[UPDATE: A reader points out that when discussing this subject back in 2011, the question had arisen as to whether this was indeed the best reading of 2339B(d) for the 1996-2004 period.  I had responded ...

In his post on yesterday's decision in (what I think we should all call) Hamdan II, Jack writes "The historical arguments for a conspiracy charge in military commissions under the laws of war, while not ...