Boumediene/Al Odah Briefs
on Aug 24, 2007 at 5:23 pm
Today is the deadline for top-side briefs in the detainee cases. Mayer, Brown is very helpfully posting links to all of them here. [UPDATE: The brief in Boumediene is here. Note that the Boumediene case is not limited to the habeas question. The second question presented (“[w]hether Petitioners’ indefinite military imprisonment as ‘enemy combatants’ is unlawful, requiring the grant of habeas relief”) is directed at the issue of identifying the category of persons who Congress has authorized the military to indefinitely detain.]
Having only glanced at them quickly, this amicus brief stood out as particularly noteworthy: It’s filed on behalf of specialists in Israeli law, and it discusses the procedures and substantive rules that Israel uses in its detention practices. (The Israeli courts and legislature have considered these questions in considerable depth.) Particularly noteworthy is the discussion on pages 17-18 concerning the category of persons who are subject to military detention in Israel. The “substantive” issue of who Congress has authorized the U.S. military to detain indefinitely is the important second question presented in the Boumediene case (distinct from the question of whether petitioners have habeas rights and whether the MCA/DTA scheme is an adequate substitute for habeas)
