courts
747 Articles
Sparring Over the 9/11 Trial Recusal Motion
Anyone who’s been following the military commission prosecution of the five alleged 9/11 plotters at Guantánamo Bay is likely familiar with some of the absurd happenings in…
Why the D.C. Circuit Can’t Really Duck the Article III Issue in Al Bahlul
As one of those who spends parts of his Tuesday and Friday mornings trolling PACER for new D.C. Circuit rulings (which appear there before they’re posted on the Court of…
Important First Step by HPSCI on Pre-Publication Review Reform
Editor’s note: This post also appears on Lawfare. We are happy to learn, via Secrecy News, that the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (HPSCI) has weighed in constructively…
Will Justice Sotomayor Recuse in Turkmen?
As Marcia Coyle reported last week in The National Law Journal, and as I predicted back in December, the Solicitor General has filed a petition for certiorari in Ashcroft v.…
Guilty Pleas For GTMO Detainees (Without Ever Setting Foot on US Soil)
Last week Steve wrote about the then-not-yet public provision in the Senate version of the FY2017 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) that would permit Guantánamo detainees…
Why Federal Agencies Must Still Preserve (and Should Finally Read) the SSCI Torture Report
This week’s news that the CIA’s Office of Inspector General destroyed two copies of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence Report (SSCI Report) on the CIA’s Detention…
A Supplement to Steve Vladeck’s Assessment of the Supreme Court’s Treatment of Courts-Martial
Professor Steve Vladeck recently published an interesting analysis of the Supreme Court’s “troubling neglect of courts-martial,” and I agree with most of what he puts forth.…
Can Detainees Plead Their Way Out of Guantánamo?
One of the more curious tidbits to emerge from the Senate Armed Services Committee’s draft of the FY2017 National Defense Authorization Act (which the Committee approved…
Transparency, Review, and Relief: The Far-Reaching Implications of the Kunduz Report
Thus far, many discussions of the US military’s release of a 120-page detailed report of the lawfulness of its attack on the Médicins Sans Frontières (MSF) facility in Kunduz,…
Fourth Circuit To Hear Abu Ghraib Political Question Doctrine Appeal
Tomorrow morning, an (as-yet-unannounced) panel of the US Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit will hear the (third!) appeal in Al Shimari v. CACI Premier Technology, Inc.,…
The Supreme Court’s Troubling Neglect of Courts-Martial
Later this year, the Supreme Court will decide whether to take up the case of Akbar v. United States — in which the Petitioner is seeking review of a capital court-martial…
Are US Courts Going Dark?
Now that the cell phones in San Bernardino and Brooklyn have been unlocked (no thanks to Apple), FBI warnings about “going dark” in the face of advancing digital encryption…