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There’s a lot of meat in Deborah’s and Marty’s posts to which I should respond. I’ll take on, first, Marty’s suggestion that habeas offers a good procedural device for resolving detention cases and then Deborah’s more fundamental suggestion that we shouldn’t let the bad case of Guantanamo make bad law on detentions more generally. I ...

Many thanks to Marty for the kind words and thoughtful critique of my proposal. Two thoughts in initial response (I will probably have more later): First, I did not mean my op-ed to suggest that Congress should act precipitously in the run-up to the election. While I do feel a sense of urgency about legislation in this area, it is far more ...

My first thoughts in response to the decision can be found here, but I have a few additional observations, largely in response to prior posts. Marty and Emily are quite right to raise the question of whether the decision yesterday moots the need for legislation on detention. After all, the court has given detainees much of the process I and ...

Deborah has thrown down a gauntlet to me: ''Any court we pick-commissions, courts martial, federal courts, some new system-is going to have to grapple in prosecutions with tough questions of classified evidence, confrontation rights, and (because of this particular administration's own past bad acts) the treatment of the accused. I'd say there's ...

Diane’s post highlights an excellent example of the often perverse consequences of human-rights policies for, well, human rights. There is no doubt that modern pirates commit horrible crimes against civilians; that's their chosen profession. Yet because of the combination of British asylum law and the international obligation not to return ...

In his first post in response to my recent column, Marty declares me “simply incorrect” for arguing that there is, as I put it, “considerable space between what the [Army] field manual [on interrogations] permits and what the law might reasonably tolerate.” In his second post, he spends some thoughtful paragraphs articulating what interrogation ...

Marty says I am ''simply mistaken'' to argue that there is considerable space between the lines set by the Army Field Manual and the legal lines imposed by various international obligations of the United States. I don't think I'm mistaken—certainly not simply so. In rewriting the Army Field Manual, the military rejected almost all of the new ...

Two thoughts in response to Marty's provocative questions: First, I think having a relatively independent DNI probably is manageable constitutionally. We already have, after all, an FBI director who is appointed for a term of years that does not coincide with that of the appointing president. While the DNI is higher up the food chain, I suspect ...

Diane's point is well-taken: If the evidence is tainted, it's tainted for purposes of conviction, as well as for sentencing, and it's just as tainted if the defendant gets a long prison sentence as it is if he gets a lethal injection. If the conviction is ''clean,'' by contrast, it's clean irrespective of the nature of the sentence he ...

[Benjamin Wittes] To the extent the eventual convictions of KSM et al rely on coerced testimony, even indirectly, I agree with you, Emily, that the Defense Department should not put them to death. The hard question is what to do if, notwithstanding their brutal treatment, the military commissions can deliver ''clean'' convictions that do not ...