news from the ABA Standing Committee: breakfast event with Judge Lamberth re Article III terrorism trials; GTMO/BTIF habeas database; audio of al panels and speakers from the recent Review of the Field Conference

A lot of interesting material emerging out of the ABA Standing Committee on Law and National Security

1)     Next Standing Committee Breakfast Program – “Trying Terrorists in Article III Courts” — December 17, 2009 – 8:00 a.m. – University Club – keynote speaker will be Chief Judge Royce C. Lamberth, United States District Court for the District of Columbia. Letter of invitation and registration form attached.

2)     Searchable database created by Standing Committee containing every Guantanamo and Bagram detainee habeas petition brought before the DC courts since the Supreme Court decision – details below

3)     Nineteenth Annual Review Conference audio recording of every panel and keynote speaker now posted on website – www.abanet.org/natsecurity

On June 12, 2008, the Supreme Court held in Boumediene v. Bush that: “[T]he costs of delay can no longer be borne by those who are held in custody [at Guantanamo Bay]…The detainees in these cases are entitled to a prompt habeas corpus hearing.” While this ruling established definitively the right of habeas corpus for detainees at Guantanamo, it also left unresolved many important questions about how these habeas petitions would be adjudicated. As a consequence, the DC District Court and Court of Appeals have been charged with deciding such issues as: the substantive scope of the Executive’s detention authority; the reach of the suspension clause to Bagram; whether conditions of confinement are open to habeas challenge; standards for admitting hearsay into evidence; and procedures for handling classified intelligence reports.

In one of his first acts as chair of the Standing Committee, Harvey Rishikof organized a project to document this habeas litigation. The end product of this effort is a searchable database, created by the Standing Committee, containing every Guantanamo and Bagram detainee habeas petition brought before the DC courts since the Supreme Court decision. We hope the database will prove useful to legal scholars, practitioners, and journalists studying this issue, and we encourage you to send along suggestions for improving its functionality to our program assistant, Matt Owens, at owensm@staff.abanet.org.

To begin using the database, click HERE.

By Robert M. Chesney

Robert M. Chesney is Charles I. Francis Professor in Law at UT-Austin School of Law. Chesney is a national security law specialist, with a particular interest in problems associated with terrorism. Professor Chesney recently served in the Justice Department in connection with the Detainee Policy Task Force created by Executive Order 13493. He is a member of the Advisory Committee of the American Bar Association's Standing Committee on Law and National Security, a senior editor for the Journal of National Security Law & Policy, an associate member of the Intelligence Science Board, a non-resident senior fellow of the Brookings Institution, a term member of the Council on Foreign Relations, and a member of the American Law Institute. Professor Chesney has published extensively on topics ranging from detention and prosecution in the counterterrorism context to the states secrets privilege. He served previously as chair of the Section on National Security Law of the Association of American Law Schools and as editor of the National Security Law Report (published by the American Bar Association's Standing Committee on Law and National Security). His upcoming projects include two books under contract with Oxford University Press, one concerning the evolution of detention law and policy and the other examining the judicial role in national security affairs.

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