In my last post on the Court's decision in Boumedienne, I suggested that Congress could, if it wanted to, revoke War on Terror detainees' rights to a hearing in federal court by suspending the writ of habeas corpus. In his own more recent post, Jonathan Adler raises some interesting questions about whether Congress really could suspend the writ. As Jonathan puts it:

The Suspension Clause provides that "[t]he 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." This language seems to impose two separate conditions on the use of the clause: 1) "Rebellion or Invasion" and 2) "public Safety." Assuming, for the sake of argument, that these requirements are justiciable (an assumption I don't necessarily accept) what showing would the government have to make?

Before trying to address this issue, I should note that the meaning of these two requirements of the Suspension Clause have never been litigated in the Supreme Supreme Court, and that I am not a habeas expert. Therefore, I'm far from certain that I'm right about what I say below, and would welcome correction from specialists in the field.

That said, I think Jonathan asks exactly the right questions. However, I am less skeptical than he is that the requirements in question could be met. The War on Terror surely doesn't qualify as a "Rebellion," but Al Qaeda's attacks on New York and Washington DC and its attempts to attack other targets in the United States could potentially qualify as an "Invasion." A relatively small invasion to be sure (in terms of the number of enemy combatants involved). But a big one in so far as it has killed more Americans than any other incursion of enemy forces onto US soil in our history, at least since the War of 1812.

One could potentially interpret the requirement of "Rebellion or Invasion" to mean that the writ can only be suspended in those areas where the invasion is ongoing; Jonathan, in his post, seems to make this assumption or at least raise the possibility that it is correct. If the assumption is valid, it rules out suspension of the writ with respect to enemy personnel captured abroad or anywhere in the United States other than New York City and Washington, DC on the day of September 11, 2001 itself. However, I don't think the assumption is valid. No such restriction on the scope of the suspension power is is evident in the text. And it would be somewhat absurd to hold that Congress can only suspend the write of habeas corpus in those parts of the United States where US authorities have no ability to detain people anyway because the areas in question are occupied by enemy forces. I also don't think that the constitutional validity of suspension depends on whether the detainees are held at Guantanamo or some other site. Nothing in the clause suggests that suspension is only permitted if the detainees are held in the same general area as the location of the rebellion or invasion that triggered the Suspension Clause in the first place.

A related question is whether the "invasion" has ended now that (as far as we know) al Qaeda forces are no longer present on US soil in any significant numbers. My tentative view is that the emergency triggered by an invasion can continue so long as the war that the invasion was a part of does. It doesn't necessarily require the continued presence of enemy forces on US soil, though it probably does require a continued serious threat that they may return as part of the same ongoing conflict.

The second requirement - that "the public Safety may require" suspension - is even more difficult to assess. Much depends on the question of how much deference courts should grant to executive or congressional determinations that the public safety really would be threatened if the writ is not suspended. It seems to me that the text does mandate some degree of deference because it states that the standard is that "the public Safety may require" suspension. This suggests that the government need not definitely prove that suspension is essential to public safety.

At the same time, I don't think that the language of the Suspension Clause justifies near-absolute judicial deference to a congressional determination that the public safety requires suspension. My best guess is that the "public safety" prong of the Clause could be satisfied by something similar to proof by a preponderance of evidence. As a practical matter, I think that the Court would defer to Congress' judgment if the suspension were narrowly targeted and supplemented by some other form of due process protection for detainees.

As Jonathan indicates, the above analysis assumes that these issues are justiciable at all. It could be argued that they are within the exclusive judgment of Congress. I won't argue this issue in detail. But I doubt that the rebellion/invasion and "public safety" requirements of the Clause are completely nonjusticiable. If they were, Congress could decide that virtually any real or imagined emergency is a threat to "public safety" and then use it as an excuse to suspend the writ of habeas corpus.

To say that suspension of the writ would (probably) be constitutional is not to say that it should be done. I'm not sure that it should be enacted at all. If Congress does attempt suspension, I believe that any such effort should be narrowly focused, and supplemented with other types of protections for the rights of detainees.