The recent decision from the D.C. Circuit (the Esmail affirmance), and Supreme Court's recent cert. denials in several cases, warrant an update to our habeas numbers.

They say you can't tell how a case is going to come out from an oral argument. Sometimes you can, and today is one of those days. Hussain Salem Mohammad Almerfedi is going to have his head handed to him ...

Last week the AP published a rather breathless piece titled "AP Exclusive: US military holds terror suspects in secret jails for weeks without charge."  That certainly got my attention.  From the title, ...

Tomorrow morning, a panel of the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals will hear arguments in another Guantanamo habeas case, that of Hussain Salem Mohammad Almerfedi (Case No. 10-5291).

Judge Laurence Silberman's concurring opinion today in Esmail makes three points, each of them warranting comment. I have enormous regard for Judge Silberman, and I critique his opinion with caution. But...

The D.C. Circuit's per curiam opinion today in Esmail is unremarkable--exactly what one would have suspected from the oral argument. Judge Laurence Silberman's concurrence, by contrast, is altogether rem...

Today the D.C. Circuit, in a per curiam decision accompanied by a concurrence from Judge Laurence Silberman, affirmed Judge Henry Kennedy's denial of habeas to petitioner Yasein Khasem Mohammad Esmail (C...

My to-read shelf is getting unmanagebly stacked. Today's addition: Jonathan Hafetz's new book from NYU Press, Habeas Corpus After 9/11: Confronting America's New Global Detention System. According to Ama...

Alejandro Manevich, a lawyer in Ontario and one of my oldest friends, writes in with the following: I have an idea for your Lawfare contest.  As a friendly amendment to Luis Dickson's proposal, might I s...

Luis M. Dickson's truly heroic effort to chart a path by which the Obama administration could conceivably live under the law as articulated by the New York Times editorial board seems, alas, to have hit ...

The first Lawfare contest--to come up "with a strategy for KSM that is both unambiguously lawful under [the law as stated in recent] New York Times editorials and politically conceivable on Planet Earth"...

Yesterday, I wondered how the New York Times would treat Attorney General Holder's announcement of a military commission trial for the September 11 conspirators: "Will the Times praise Holder for respect...