Location: U.S.

Naval Base at Guantanamo Bay Facts of the Case In 2002 Lakhdar Boumediene and five other Algerian natives were seized by Bosnian police when U.S. intelligence officers suspected their involvement in a plot to attack the U.S. embassy there. The U.S. government classified the men as enemy combatants in the war on terror and detained them at the Guantanamo Bay Naval Base, which is located on land that the U.S. leases from Cuba. Boumediene filed a petition for a writ of habeas corpus, alleging violations of the Constitution's Due Process Clause, various statutes and treaties, the common law, and international law. The District Court judge granted the government's motion to have all of the claims dismissed on the ground that Boumediene, as an alien detained at an overseas military base, had no right to a habeas petition. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit affirmed the dismissal but the Supreme Court reversed in Rasul v. Bush, which held that the habeas statute extends to non-citizen detainees at Guantanamo. In 2006, Congress passed the Military Commissions Act of 2006 (MCA). The Act eliminates federal courts' jurisdiction to hear habeas applications from detainees who have been designated (according to procedures established in the Detainee Treatment Act of 2005) as enemy combatants. When the case was appealed to the D.C. Circuit for the second time, the detainees argued that the MCA did not apply to their petitions, and that if it did, it was unconstitutional under the Suspension Clause. The Suspension Clause reads: "The Privilege of the Writ of Habeas Corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in Cases of Rebellion or Invasion the public Safety may require it." The D.C. Circuit ruled in favor of the government on both points. It cited language in the MCA applying the law to "all cases, without exception" that pertain to aspects of detention. One of the purposes of the MCA, according to the Circuit Court, was to overrule the Supreme Court's opinion in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld, which had allowed petitions like Boumediene's to go forward. The D.C. Circuit held that the Suspension Clause only protects the writ of habeas corpus as it existed in 1789, and that the writ would not have been understood in 1789 to apply to an overseas military base leased from a foreign government. Constitutional rights do not apply to aliens outside of the United States, the court held, and the leased military base in Cuba does not qualify as inside the geographic borders of the U.S. In a rare reversal, the Supreme Court granted certiorari after initially denying review three months earlier. Read the Briefs for this Case Question 1. Should the Military Commissions Act of 2006 be interpreted to strip federal courts of jurisdiction over habeas petitions filed by foreign citizens detained at the U.S. Naval Base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba? 2. If so, is the Military Commissions Act of 2006 a violation of the Suspension Clause of the Constitution? 3. Are the detainees at Guantanamo Bay entitled to the protection of the Fifth Amendment right not to be deprived of liberty without due process of law and of the Geneva Conventions? 4. Can the detainees challenge the adequacy of judicial review provisions of the MCA before they have sought to invoke that review?

Conclusion Decision: 5 votes for Boumediene, 4 vote(s) against Legal provision: Article 1, Section 9, Paragraph 2: Suspension of the Writ of Habeas Corpus A five-justice majority answered yes to each of these questions. The opinion, written by Justice Anthony Kennedy, stated that if the MCA is considered valid its legislative history requires that the detainees' cases be dismissed. However, the Court went on to state that because the procedures laid out in the Detainee Treatment Act are not adequate substitutes for the habeas writ, the MCA operates as an unconstitutional suspension of that writ. The detainees were not barred from seeking habeas or invoking the Suspension Clause merely because they had been designated as enemy combatants or held at Guantanamo Bay. The Court reversed the D.C. Circuit's ruling and found in favor of the detainees. Justice David H. Souter concurred in the judgment. Chief Justice John G. Roberts and Justice Antonin Scalia filed separate dissenting opinions.

Summary of Boumediene v. Bush Facts: In 2002, Lakhdar Boumediene and five other Algerian natives were apprehended by Bosnian police based upon the suspicions of U.S. intelligence officers that they were involved in the bombings of a U.S. embassy there. The U.S. was given custody of the men, who were then immediately classified as enemy combatants and detained at the naval base at Guantanamo Bay. Boumediene filed a petition for writ of habeas corpus arguing that the U.S. government violated his Due Process Clause rights. The U.S. District Court dismissed Boumedienes claims on the grounds that he was not a U.S. citizen, and he was detained at an extra-territorial base, thus not entitling him to the same constitutional protections afforded to someone on U.S. soil. The U.S. Court of Appeals affirmed the ruling, but the U.S.S.C. reversed the ruling in Rasul v. Bush and indicated that foreign nationals, even if they are enemy combatants, have at least the right to challenge their enemy combatant status in court. In kind, Congress passed the Military Commissions Act which stripped federal courts of the authority to hear habeas corpus cases from detainees who have been classified as enemy combatants as a means to apparently circumvent the Supreme Court ruling. The detainees applied to the D.C. Circuit Court for a second time, arguing that Congress could not in essence retroactively change the rules of the game, and argued that even if it could, the Suspension Clause which states that, The Privilege of the Writ of Habeas Corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in Cases of Rebellion or Invasion the public Safety may require it, prevented the Congress from infringing on their rights because there was rebellion or invasion. Since the MCA explicitly stated that it applied to all cases, with no exceptions, the Circuit Court affirmed the governments right to legislate in such a way. The Court ruled that the Suspension Clause was more of a historical relic that only really applied to the circumstances surrounding the political and national security climate in 1789; at that time, it was believed the intent of the amendment was not to protect foreign nationals but citizens. While it initially declined to hear the case, the U.S. Supreme Court eventually decided to hear arguments regarding Boumedienes claims in order to answer the question regarding foreign nationals and the right to due process in the context of detainment in extra-territorial bases. Issue: Several legal questions were presented. They included the following: Should courts interpret the MCA of 2006 to mean that they no longer have any jurisdiction over habeas corpus petitions filed by foreign nationals detained at extra-territorial bases, in this case Guantanamo Bay? If the answer to the first question is in the affirmative, is the MCA of 2006 in violation of the Constitutions Suspension Clause? Are Guantanamo Bay detainees entitled to Fifth Amendment protections without due process of the law and consideration of the Geneva Conventions? Do detainees have to invoke judicial review provision first or can they challenge them on other merits before invoking an actual review? Holding: The Supreme Court ruled affirmatively for all of the questions. Majority Opinion Reasoning: The Court reasoned that prisoners, even enemy combatants, have a right to habeas corpus. The Court reasoned that while Guantanamo Bay is a base located in Cuba, it is still territorially under the control of the United States government; therefore, the Constitution and all of its protections still apply, for it is essentially American soil. Dissenting Opinion: Chief Justice Roberts and Associate Justice Scalia both dissented, simply asserting that foreign nationals, whether named enemy combatants or given another moniker, have never been afforded the right to habeas corpus as a matter of historical record, and thus there was no reason why it should be believed that in 2006 the contextual situation had changed.

Conclusion: This case was significant because it enshrined the precedent that even enemy combatants have habeas corpus rights and that they cannot indefinitely be denied due process under the law simply because they are not citizens. It should be noted however, that the federal government nevertheless maintains a considerable amount of latitude regarding practices concerning enemy detainment in extra-territorial settings, and practices such as rendition further complicate the issue.