Recent Hamdan Developments
on Oct 26, 2005 at 3:56 pm
No. 05-184, Hamdan v. Rumsfeld, has been re-listed for the Court’s conference on Friday, October 28. Today, 450 law professors issed a statement urging the Court to grant cert. in Hamdan to address what they regard as “foundational questions” involving “the relationship between the President’s constitutional powers as Commander-in-Chief and the existing constitutional, statutory, and international rules and tribunals that govern the conduct of war.” The text of the letter is available here; the list of signatories is available here; the letter transmitting the statement to Senators Specter and Leahy is available here.
Owen Bonheimer has this op-ed piece in this week’s Legal Times (subscription required) in which he urges the Court to grant cert. in Hamdan because tribunals in Iraq are now relying on the D.C. Circuit’s decision in Hamdan to allow the use of secret evidence. Bonheimer contends that “[l]eaving the D.C. Circuit decision unreviewed will foster a worldwide weakening of the fabric of international law,” as “the Hamdan decision could serve as a precedent for other countries to violate the rights not only of Saddam Hussein and his admittedly unsympathetic cohorts, but also of our troops.”
