Al Alwi Argument Details
Next Thursday, November 4th, the Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit will hear oral argument in Al Alwi v. Obama, a habeas merits appeal.
Published by The Lawfare Institute
in Cooperation With
Next Thursday, November 4th, the Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit will hear oral argument in Al Alwi v. Obama, a habeas merits appeal. The court announced yesterday that argument will "proceed first in open session, followed, if necessary, by a classified session closed to the public." The order is consistent with the government's position, though the petitioner preferred the argument be conducted entirely in closed session.
The appeal is before Judges David Tatel, Merrick Garland, and Stephen Williams. It is the second of three cases the panel will hear beginning at 9:30 AM. Here is the petitioner’s merits brief. And here is the government’s brief. The petitioner's reply brief can be found here. We will soon post a summary of the arguments on appeal; they concern discovery, admissible evidence, and the scope of the government's detention authority.
Larkin Reynolds is an associate at a D.C. law firm and was a legal fellow at Brookings from 2010 to 2011. Larkin holds a J.D. from Harvard Law School, where she served as a founding editor of the Harvard National Security Journal and interned with the Senate Judiciary Committee, the Navy Judge Advocate General’s Corps, and the National Security Division of the Department of Justice. She also has a B.A. in international relations from New York University.