Archive | June, 2004

whose excellent Stepping into the Same River Twice: Rapidly Changing Facts and the Appellate Process, 78 Texas L. Rev. 269 (1999), was just cited by the Supreme Court majority opinion in Ashcroft v. ACLU.

Very nice review of my You Can’t Say That! published in the Law and Politics Book Review.

In a post below, I describe this scenario: Say that we’re fighting a World War II-like war, but against insurgent forces in various allied countries, and not against national governments. (You’ll see in a moment why this proviso is important). We capture 50,000 alleged enemy soldiers, partly because some of the enemy forces have surrendered […]

Right on Race, founded by Tom Wood — the coauthor of Prop. 209 — and with posts by Roger Clegg (Center for Equal Opportunity), Todd Gaziano (Heritage Foundation), John Rosenberg (the Discriminations blog), and Tom himself. It also has an Open Forum section for reader submissions, which appears to be moderated (a good move, I […]

I’ve blogged below about one aspect of the Guantanamo detainees case; but here’s the bigger picture: Say that we’re fighting a World War II-like war, but against insurgent forces in various allied countries, and not against national governments. (You’ll see in a moment why this proviso is important). We capture 50,000 alleged enemy soldiers, partly […]

In Rasul v. Bush today, the Court held that the Guantanamo detainees are entitled to have their detention reviewed, presumably by civilian courts, even though they’re not U.S. citizens, and they’re being held outside the U.S. Johnson v. Eisentrager, a 1950 case involving a similar petition brought by detained Nazi soldiers, seemed to hold the […]

Judge Richard Posner and Vicki Jackson square off in Legal Affairs.

Prof. Steven Taylor (PoliBlog) is running this, and it seems like a worthy project: I have volunteered to help Dr. Safaa al-Hamdani, a biology professor at Jacksonville State University (another school here in Alabama) in a book drive to collect texts to help populate the Baghdad University library, which, between post-war looting and multi-decade neglect […]

Well, it turns out that the Moore/Letterman exchange I mentioned last week is indeed apparently fictional. (As I mentioned in the original post, “Don’t know if it’s true, and I won’t assume that it is. But it’s at least a good joke.”) Nathan Florea says he has a more accurate transcript, which is very different, […]

alleged to have been fighting for al Qaeda or the Taliban? That was one of the issues in Hamdi and in Padilla. A federal law, 18 U.S.C. 4001(a), says “No citizen shall be imprisoned or otherwise detained by the United States except pursuant to an Act of Congress.” Padilla and Hamdi argued that as a […]

Note that Justices Scalia and Thomas are about as far apart as possible in the Hamdi case. Justice Scalia would say that the military essentially has no power to detain citizens, except when Congress suspends habeas corpus, or when the citizens are promptly tried through the civilian criminal system. Justice Thomas would say that the […]

See here for Larry Solum’s summary and roundup of reactions.

Unless plans change, I should be on (1) Warren Olney’s To The Point radio show today (see here for the station list and times), and on (2) the Abrams Report (MSNBC). I should be talking about the Guantanamo cases, Hamdi, and Padilla on both shows. Note that TV networks often cancel such interviews at the […]

Eugene makes a good point (below) about the way that Breyer’s and Scalia’s positions gives room to both liberal and conservatives to take a position seemingly at odds with their ideologies. I would add that there is a way in which Breyer’s and Scalia’s votes are completely unsurprising: Scalia’s position is in line with his […]

Marty Lederman, a very knowledgeable lawyer and Court-watcher, posts his thoughts at SCOTUSBlog.