Over at OpinioJuris, Duncan Hollis asks whether captured pirates might be entitled to the protections of Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions. I address the problems posed by the Geneva conventions to piracy prosecutions in my forthcoming essay, pg. 21-27. Forget Article 3, I wrote; the pirates have a weak but colorable claim to prisoner of war protection, or at least an Article 5 hearing. (See pgs. 21-27).
However, in thinking about a problem with applying common article 3 to Somali pirates noted by Prof. Hollis, it occurred to me that the problem reveals a difficulty with the Supreme Court