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 en masse; apparently we had captured millions that way towards the end of World War II. The allied countries don’t have strong enough militaries to effectively detain these people themselves (think France in early 1945), so we detain them instead. This is actually quite normal for large-scale wars, consider again World War II, except that the war is a modern war against insurgents and not a traditional war against governments.
Now, the detainees file 50,000 petitions for habeas corpus, all claiming that they aren’t actually enemy soldiers. . . . It sounds like they’ll probably get to file their petitions, strain our courts, impose more burdens on our soldiers, and possibly even risk the disclosure of secret material. Litigation will become a tactic of warfare.
A couple of readers ask: If the result is so burdensome, why can’t Congress just avoid it by suspending habeas corpus? Consider it a little constitutional law puzzle.
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