Boumediene v. Bush, 553 U.S. (2008)
Procedural History:
A writ of habeas corpus submission made in
a civilian court of the United States on behalf of Lakhdar
Boumediene, a naturalized citizen of Bosnia and Herzegovina,
held in military detention by the United States at the
Guantanamo Bay detention camps
Facts:
In the Authorization for Use of Military
Force Congress empowered the President “to use all necessary and
appropriate force against those . . . he determines planned,
authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks . . . on
September 11, 2001.” In Hamdi v. Rumsfeld, 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. Petitioners’ cases were then
consolidated into two proceedings. In the first, the district
judge granted the Government’s motion to dismiss, holding that
the detainees had no rights that could be vindicated in a habeas
action. In the second, the judge held that the detainees had due
process rights.
In 2006, Congress passed the Military
Commissions Act of 2006 (MCA). The Act eliminates federal
courts' jurisdiction to hear habeas applications from detainees
who have been designated (according to procedures established in
the Detainee Treatment Act of 2005) as enemy combatants. When
the case was appealed to the D.C. Circuit for the second time,
the detainees argued that the MCA did not apply to their
petitions, and that if it did, it was unconstitutional under the
Suspension Clause. The Suspension Clause reads: "The Privilege
of the Writ of Habeas Corpus shall not be suspended, unless when
in Cases of Rebellion or Invasion the public Safety may require
it."
The D.C. Circuit ruled in favor of the
government on both points. It cited language in the MCA applying
the law to "all cases, without exception" that pertain to
aspects of detention. One of the purposes of the MCA, according
to the Circuit Court, was to overrule the Supreme Court's
opinion in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld, which had allowed petitions like
Boumediene's to go forward. The D.C. Circuit held that the
Suspension Clause only protects the writ of habeas corpus as it
existed in 1789, and that the writ would not have been
understood in 1789 to apply to an overseas military base leased
from a foreign government. Constitutional rights do not apply to
aliens outside of the United States, the court held, and the
leased military base in Cuba does not qualify as inside the
geographic borders of the U.S. In a rare reversal, the Supreme
Court granted certiorari after initially denying review three
months earlier.
Issue:
1.
Should the Military Commissions Act of 2006 be
interpreted to strip federal courts of jurisdiction over habeas
petitions filed by foreign citizens detained at the U.S. Naval
Base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and if so, is the Military
Commissions Act of 2006 a violation of the Suspension Clause of
the Constitution?
2.
Are the detainees at Guantanamo Bay entitled to the
protection of the 5th Amendment right not to be
deprived of liberty without due process of law and of the Geneva
Conventions, and can the detainees challenge the adequacy of
judicial review provisions of the MCA before they have sought to
invoke that review?
Holding:
A 5 to 4 majority answered yes to each of
these questions. The opinion stated that if the MCA is
considered valid its legislative history requires that the
detainees' cases be dismissed. However, the Court went on to
state that because the procedures laid out in the Detainee
Treatment Act are not adequate substitutes for the habeas writ,
the MCA operates as an unconstitutional suspension of that writ.
The detainees were not barred from seeking habeas or invoking
the Suspension Clause merely because they had been designated as
enemy combatants or held at Guantanamo Bay. The Court reversed
the D.C. Circuit's ruling and found in favor of the detainees.
Justice David H. Souter concurred in the judgment. Chief Justice
John G. Roberts and Justice Antonin Scalia filed separate
dissenting opinions.
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