Pardiss Kebriaei on the A-Zahrani Oral Argument

Pardiss Kebriaei writes in with the following response to my admittedly harsh summary of her D.C. Circuit argument in Al-Zahrani, in which I suggested that she had no good answer to a pretty basic jurisdictional question:

You've been sitting in the back of the courtroom in the D.C. Circuit long enough to know that when it comes to the question of jurisdiction over claims by Guantanamo detainees, good answers--and ultimately the ones accepted by the Supreme Court--haven't exactly carried the day in the lower court before.  See Rasul and Boumediene. It remains to be seen whether the right answer will be vindicated on the question of jurisdiction over non-habeas claims. In the meantime, I'll continue to be up at the dais defending my clients, which does, as you describe, require quite a bit more tenacity than commenting from the gallery.

She's quite right that the Supreme Court and the D.C. Circuit have not seen eye-to-eye on jurisdiction in the past, though I doubt very much that this case will be the next to bring that dispute into the open. As to tenacity, I certainly don't begrudge Kebriaei the most vigorous presentation of her arguments in any forum she sees fit. Far from it. I just suspect that she probably doesn't serve her clients by presenting arguments in a fashion that cause all three judges on a panel to walk out of court on her mid-sentence. That's just a guess, of course--and, as she notes, it is one that is certainly easier to make from the comfort of the gallery.