Jacob Levy asks me this. My tentative answer is that I don’t think this should matter that much — to me, the important questions are whether the detainees are U.S. citizens, and whether they were detained in military operations in a theatre of combat. If both are satisfied, then I think there’s a strong case […]
Archive | April, 2004
Guantanamo:
A question for Eugene: It looks to me as if your (persuasive) argument about unlawful combatant detainees doesn’t turn at any point on the status of Guantanamo Bay as a place. That is, if I’ve read your argument correctly it would be legal (or, which might be different, unreviewable by U.S. civilian courts) to hold […]
Political Science Moves to SSRN Model:
There has been intermittent commentary in the blogosphere about how much we political scientists envied the availability of online resources like SSRN for pre-prints, working papers, and so on. A group of political science associations have launched www.politicalscience.org, which is starting off as a searchable database of conference papers but which is supposed to expand […]
Amicus curiae briefs:
My friend and colleague Stuart Banner just came out with an excellent short article called The Myth of the Neutral Amicus: American Courts and Their Friends, 1790-1890, 20 Constitutional Commentary 111 (2003). I found it quite enlightening and asked him for permission to post his Introduction; he kindly said yes, so here it is: An […]
But what if we were doing something really, really bad?
Some people ask — but what if we were doing something really, really bad to the Guantanamo detainees, or for that matter to Nazi or Japanese soldiers taken prisoner in World War II? Or, which is what the question amounts to, what if there were charges that we were doing something really, really bad: Torturing […]
Guantanamo:
My colleague Kal Raustiala writes: Saw your blog query: [W]hat if every criminal defendant in the US refused to plead out and demanded a trial[?] Is there a constitutional difference between this scenario and your “many prisoners in a war situation” scenario? Both would wildly overload the system. Is there a reason you see for […]
More on Guantanamo,
from Ann Althouse.
Detainees and unlawful combatants vs. POWs:
My post about Guantanamo brought several messages about this perennial issue. Some complained that the Administration is trying to have it both ways by coming up with some novel category of non-POW detainees. Others didn’t complain about the Administration’s actions as such, but simply suggested that the courts could come up with a dividing line […]
Failed Gorelick Defense:
The Washington Post tried to defend Jamie Gorelick against “Mr. Ashcroft’s Smear,” but fails. While the Post pretends that Ms. Gorelick’s 1995 memo, and the subsequent guidelines, did not erect a “wall” between intelligence and law enforcement, it misses the larger point. At issue is not whether Ms. Gorelick played a postive or negative role […]
Metro: Fixed Rail Versus Buses:
Against my better judgment (given what I think is an overheated real estate market), I am househunting in Arlington, Virginia. Houses that are walking distance to the Metro are attracting the most speculative fervor, with traffic jams forming at open houses. So, I started researching which neighborhoods were in what I assumed were on less […]
About to be on the Michael Reagan Show,
criticizing the proposed Victims’ Rights Amendment.
Litigation as a military tactic:
Here’s the question I ask people who think that the Guantanamo detainees have a right to petition civilian courts for habeas corpus. Let’s say that we weren’t dealing with several hundred detainees, but with tens or hundreds of thousands, as was the case during World War II. If one of them has the right to […]
Save the Planets:
Today’s Slate Explainer answers the question: “Who’s Our Planetary Protection Officer? And what the heck does he do?” Cool.
“Fucking Brilliant” Regulatory Strategy:
Until Janet Jackson’s breast appeared for .7 seconds (an FCC friend tells me that FCC staffers watched it dozens of times to count the number of frames containing an image of her breast), FCC penalties for broadcast indecency were rare and relatively small. Only three fines since 1999 were greater than $50,000. The fifth-highest fine […]
How Appealing: Howard Bashman’s blog, How Appealing — which has quickly become the leading U.S. source of hot legal news about interesting recent cases — is now here, hosted by Legal Affairs. If you’re a lawyer, a law student, or a legal academic and you haven’t seen it, be sure to check it out.