Litigation
823 Articles
Military Commissions After Guantánamo
This Wednesday morning at 9:30 (EDT), a three-judge panel of the D.C. Circuit (Henderson, Rogers, & Tatel, JJ.) will hear oral argument in al Bahlul v. United States–a Guantánamo…
New al-Nashiri developments . . . regarding the MV Limburg and USS COLE charges [UPDATED as of late November]
In recent days the lawyers for Abd al-Rahim Hussain al-Nashiri, the military commission defendant charged with involvement in the bombings of the USS COLE and MV Limburg, have…
State Secrets Might Get a Little More Secret
The state secrets privilege has been the topic of significant academic and judicial focus, particularly in the post-9/11 era in which invocations of the privilege were seen by…
The Third Time’s The Charm? SCOTUS CVSGs in Samantar
Amidst all the recent activity (and non-activity) at the Supreme Court this term, it might have been missed that the Court invited the Solicitor General to express the views of…
Supreme Court of Canada Rules Individuals cannot sue a Foreign State in Canada for Torture Committed Abroad
On Friday, the Supreme Court of Canada (SCC) affirmed that individuals cannot bring civil actions in Canada against a foreign state, which includes foreign officials, for acts…
Clapper, Adobe, and Article III Standing for Surveillance Harms
A recent decision from a federal court in the Northern District of California has added a new and interesting chapter to the decades-long saga of Article III standing in privacy…
Breaking news from the Supreme Court!
No, not that news (although it is rather shocking). The Court also denied certiorari this morning in two other cases that had received some attention in national security circles:…
The jurisdictional issue delaying the al-Nashiri military commission: Saudi defendant + French ship + Malaysian shipper + Iranian oil + Bulgarian casualty = trial in a U.S. military commission?
A couple of weeks ago, the Chief Prosecutor in the Office of Military Commissions filed an appeal to the Court of Military Commission Review from an order by the trial judge dismissing…
Constitutional “Cross-Ruffing”: My New Article
About a year ago, I wrote about the Second Circuit’s decision in the Ghailani case, in which, among other things, the Court of Appeals rejected a former Guantánamo detainee’s…
A Guantánamo Test Case for the “New” D.C. Circuit
Back in August, I wrote about the D.C. Circuit’s disappointing decision in Hatim v. Obama (the genital searches case), in which the Court of Appeals (1) held that the…
The Posse Comitatus Act, Unlawful Surveillance, and the Exclusionary Rule
Most students of U.S. national security law are familiar with the Posse Comitatus Act (PCA) — an 1878 statute that subjects to criminal punishment anyone who, “except…
NYPD Uses Discovery Tactics to Deter Civil Rights Claims
The discovery stage of national security litigation rarely attracts much interest, at least where it does not involve an invocation of “state secrets” by the federal government.…