A few months ago, Bobby wrote a post about one of the Guantanamo habeas petitions currently pending at the Supreme Court, Al Odah v. Obama.  Fawzi Khalid Abdullah Fahad Al Odah, who lost his district cou...

I am perplexed by this category and grade: Grade: Incomplete Due Process in Afghanistan. Following recommendations from Human Rights First, the Obama administration in 2009 made important improvements to...

Yesterday the D.C. Circuit denied a petition for initial hearing en banc in Abdah v. Obama (No. 05-5224), a case involving the same type of pre-transfer notice orders as those at issue in Kiyemba II.

I'm very glad that President Obama has acted in a fashion that has won him a failing grade from Human Rights First in this category: Grade: F Accountability for Torture. Torture and conspiracy to commit...

Today Judge Leon released his brief unclassified opinion in Razak Ali v. Obama, a Guantanamo habeas merits case.  In the order Judge Leon denies the petition of Abdul Razak Ali, an Algerian who also goes...

Taking up the thread of Ben's project (recasting the HRF scorecard here, here, and here), I'd like to offer an alternative take on the administration's handling of the state secrets privilege.

The next several elements of the Human Rights First report card all deal with detention and trial. The first of these is the failing grade HRF gives to the Obama administration for not closing Guantanamo...

So here are the first two elements of the Human Rights First report card, how I would recast them, and the grades I would assign. HRF's initial element reads: Grade: A- Standing Firm Against Use of Tort...

Human Rights First has published a report card, entitled "Assessing the Obama Administration’s Record of Compliance with the Rule of Law and Human Rights in National Security Policy." In reading it over,...

Brookings has just released a paper I have been working on with two coauthors on rationalizing government collection authorities for data held in the hands of third parties. The paper, entitled "Rational...

The New York Times editorial page has really outdone itself this time. I'm afraid I can no longer hedge my account of the way it is treating the subject of the legality of  detention. The Times editorial...

Tom Malinowski has an interesting op-ed in the Post today on the topic of the proposed executive order addressing annual reconsideration of GTMO detention decisions.  He notes that there may be interest ...

This is interesting.  Today in one of the more recent Guantanamo merits appeals, that of Toffiq Nasser Awad Al Bihani, the government and petitioner jointly filed for summary affirmance of the district c...

Congressional Republicans are quaking now. The President today expressed his "strong objection" to two provisions of the defense authorization bill and has threatened to "work with the Congress to seek [...

Here is the full text of President Obama's signing statement for the defense authorization bill.

President Obama’s options with respect to the GTMO transfer restrictions in the 2011 Defense Authorization bill appear to be as follows: (1) veto the bill; (2) sign the bill but decide to transfer detain...

Today the Department of Defense announced that Farhi Saeed bin Mohammed, a Guantanamo detainee, was transferred back to his native Algeria. According to the DoD press release, the United States "coordina...