David Remes on the Counsel Access Case
David Remes, an attorney representing Guantanamo detainees--and, in particular, co-counsel for the petitioner in Hatim--writes in with this comment on Friday's ruling in that case from the D.C. Circuit:
The D.C. Circuit's decision is disappointing, but in a sense it is anticlimactic. The government effectively won the case over a year ago, when the court stayed Judge Lamberth's order halting the genital searches pending appeal.
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David Remes, an attorney representing Guantanamo detainees--and, in particular, co-counsel for the petitioner in Hatim--writes in with this comment on Friday's ruling in that case from the D.C. Circuit:
The D.C. Circuit's decision is disappointing, but in a sense it is anticlimactic. The government effectively won the case over a year ago, when the court stayed Judge Lamberth's order halting the genital searches pending appeal. The effect of the stay was to deny our request for relief. While the government's appeal was pending, the detainees continued to suffer the very injury they sought to enjoin: having to submit to the humiliating searches as the price for meeting or speaking by phone with their lawyers. It shouldn't have taken a year to get a merits decision from the D.C. Circuit. Win or lose, the detainees were entitled to a swifter disposition. Once again, in a Guantanamo case, the government won simply by not losing.
Wells C. Bennett was Managing Editor of Lawfare and a Fellow in National Security Law at the Brookings Institution. Before coming to Brookings, he was an Associate at Arnold & Porter LLP.
