Published in Flagpole Magazine, p. 8 (July 9, 2008).

Abstract

On June 12th, the U.S. Supreme Court handed down its decision in Boumediene v. Bush, a case involving noncitizens captured abroad and now detained as enemy combatants in the heavily fortified, ultra-high-security U. S. military prisons in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. The Supreme Court held that the detainees were constitutionally entitled to file habeas corpus petitions in federal district court to raise their claims that they were not terrorists, that they had not taken up arms against the United States, and that they were in fact wholly innocent. The Supreme Court did not decide the merits of these claims; it merely permitted the detainees to raise and litigate them in federal habeas corpus proceedings; and it most certainly did not order any detainees released.

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