US Supreme Court Ruling: Boumediene v. Bush

SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES

Syllabus

BOUMEDIENE ET AL. v. BUSH, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES, ET AL. CERTIORARI TO THE UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA CIRCUIT

No. 06–1195. Argued December 5, 2007--Decided June 12, 2008*

In the Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF), Congress empowered the President "to use all necessary and appropriate forceagainst those . . . he determines planned, authorized, committed, oraided the terrorist attacks . . . on September 11, 2001." In Hamdi v. Rumsfeld, 542 U. S. 507, 518, 588–589, five Justices recognized that detaining individuals captured while fighting against the United States in Afghanistan for the duration of that conflict was a fundamental and accepted incident to war. Thereafter, the Defense Department established Combatant Status Review Tribunals (CSRTs) to determine whether individuals detained at the U. S. Naval Station at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, were "enemy combatants." Petitioners are aliens detained at Guantanamo after being captured in Afghanistan or elsewhere abroad and designated enemy combatants by CSRTs. Denying membership in the al Qaeda terrorist network that carried out the September 11 attacks and the Taliban regime that supported al Qaeda, each petitioner sought a writ of habeas corpus in the District Court, which ordered the cases dismissed for lack of jurisdiction because Guantanamo is outside sovereign U. S. territory. The D. C. Circuit affirmed, but this Court reversed, holding that 28 U. S. C. §2241 extended statutory habeas jurisdiction to Guantanamo. See Rasul v. Bush, 542 U. S. 466, 473. Petitioners' cases were then consolidated into two proceedings...

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ENDS

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