j.modjeska

The 9/11 Commission’s Tenth Anniversary Report Card was issued this week (PDF); the brief document reported on the lack of progress the U.S. has made since the Commission’s original report in 2004. The update helpfully informed Americans that we should continue to fear the terrorists, that we should implement even more invasive TSA procedures at the airport, and that we need better walkie-talkies. These have been topics of much debate in the media. My interest in the document, however, was content related to detainee rights: would the Commission hold the administration accountable for failing to implement reasonable and lasting policy on “War on Terror” detainees?

While crediting the Obama administration with better aligning Guantanamo policy to Geneva Convention norms, the Commission largely gave a failing grade to overall U.S. policy. And they are right to do so. Taking a look back at the Commission’s original recommendation, it is clear that outside of some minimal detainee rights, all of which flowed from Supreme Court decisions, the U.S. government has not acted on this recommendation.
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“The Privilege of the Writ: The Supreme Court and Post-9/11 Detainee Habeas Corpus Entitlement” is a paper I wrote in 2010. In some ways it is a follow-up to my 2009 Kiyemba posts, Parts I and II. But mainly it’s a survey of Habeas Corpus law before and after 9/11. The full paper can be accessed on SSRN.

Abstract: Habeas corpus is the right to challenge one’s detention in a court of law. Prior to 9/11, habeas corpus jurisprudence erected a framework of entitlements that vary according to a person’s location, citizenship, and alleged crimes. Plotted on a timeline of American history, many of the landmark cases that progressively articulated this framework are clustered around wartime, and the entitlement conventions that obtained reflected the terminology of traditional warfare. After 9/11, as the nature of warfare and enemies evolved, and the Executive claimed unprecedented authority to detain enemy combatants, Guantanamo Bay became the extraterritorial detention facility of choice. Beginning in 2004, the Supreme Court responded with a series of cases that created a minimal but definite foundation of habeas corpus entitlement and due process for Guantanamo detainees. This article looks primarily at these post-9/11 cases, the traditional notions of habeas corpus upon which they are predicated, and the possible shortcomings they evidence relative to Guantanamo and to other extraterritorial detention facilities. Full text on SSRN.

This ridiculous flow chart is a study tool I made for a business law class I took a while back. It covers the basics of contract law in the United States, including common law contracts, Uniform Commercial Code (UCC) contracts, and the basic requirements and terminology associated with contracts. My main sources were Clarkson’s Business Law: Text and Cases and the U.C.C.

Warning: I disclaim any and all expert and non-expert knowledge of all laws of any kind, real or imaginary, especially contract law. Do not, under any circumstances, use this document for any consequential matters. As with everything else on this blog, it is posted for the sole purpose of my own entertainment.

This is the first draft of a little project I hacked together in Python. Everything I know about Python I learned today, so let’s all go ahead and agree that this is the worst code ever written except for the large parts I stole from Old Nabble. It probably won’t work for you, and no I don’t know how to fix it. I’m just hoping some smart people will think this is a good idea and make it better.

What I’m doing is creating custom window decorations for an instant messenger contact list window. In this case I’m using Empathy. However it should work with any contact list window. In fact, if you make the background the right size, this would work with any window at all! Really? No. Maybe, in theory. I have no idea. Anyway this isn’t a skin, but it might be a step in that direction.

Code after the fold, still very much in development.

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The Guantanamo detainee case Kiyemba v. Obama is a potentially landmark separation-of-powers case headed for the US Supreme Court in March 2010, with major policy issues and the futures of 13 detainees at stake. In this multi-part story, I will try to dig into the background and questions raised by the case. This is a follow-up to Part I: Jamal Kiyemba’s long journey home.

Part II: New borders

Judge A. Raymond Randolph wrote for the majority:

Seventeen Chinese citizens currently held at Guantanamo Bay Naval Base, Cuba, brought petitions for writs of habeas corpus. … The question is whether [they] are entitled to an order requiring the [US] government to bring them to the United States and release them here.

This opening paragraph of the decision by the DC Circuit Court of Appeals in February of 2009 introduced a document that dramatically altered the fate of those seventeen men. The men had previously been ordered by a lower court to be freed inside the United States, but the Executive branch appealed, saying the lower court had no such authority. Subsequently, the question that Judge Randolph introduced above was answered: no. No, the seventeen men will not be released into the United States, and unlike Jamal Kiyemba, they can not go home because they fear persecution by the Chinese government. There are thirteen of them now; four were released to Bermuda in June. They wait, still at Guantanamo Bay, for the slow wheels of American justice to make one final revolution as their case heads to the Supreme Court.

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