Obama Law

Emily Bazelon is a Slate senior editor. David C. Iglesias was the U.S. attorney for the District of New Mexico between 2001 and 2007. He is the author of the book In Justice: Inside the Scandal That Rocked the Bush Administration. Dahlia Lithwick is a Slate senior editor. Joseph Rich is the special counsel for federal agencies and litigation at the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law. He worked in the Department of Justice's Civil Rights Division from 1968-2005, serving as chief of the voting section for the last six years of his tenure there. Stuart Taylor Jr. is a senior writer and columnist for National Journal magazine.

Who are these people?

PRINTDISCUSSE-MAILRSSRECOMMEND...SINGLE PAGE

FacebookMySpace Mixx Digg Reddit del.icio.us Furl Ma.gnolia SphereStumbleUponCLOSE

A few final thoughts here: Stuart, I'm glad you agree that there is wisdom in letting the habeas litigation play out in the courts. I understand your potential criticisms of dealing with highly sensitive information in the federal courts. But they are just that—potential. If there is confusion about the existing rules for habeas litigation, as you say, well that's because the Bush administration fought like hell to keep these cases walled off from regular judges. All those rounds of Supreme Court litigation weren't much about the actual standards for hearing evidence—they were primarily about the preliminary call about if and where the evidence would be heard. Now that we have a different administration that presumably won't keep fighting that already-lost battle, the courts will get to give developing appropriate detention standards a real go. That helps explain, I think, why Marty Lederman and others keep resisting calls to pass a preventive detention statute any time soon. The best way to find out which of these cases are the ones that will be hard for the courts to wrestle to the ground is to watch them try.

And while the lower courts hash out the Guantamo cases, the Supreme Court has finally decided to hear Al-Marri v. Pucciarelli, the case in which a guy captured inside the United States has been held in a military brig indefinitely—suspected of war crimes but never charged. What's the Obama DoJ going to do with this one (briefs aren't due until after the new president takes office)? I can't wait to find out. And I can't wait to see the Obama administration actually put on its new legal running shoes and take DoJ and the rest of the federal government out for a spin. In the meantime, many thanks for your excellent contributions to this discussion. You've been great, and we are grateful.

Best,
Emily

Click here to read the next entry.

PRINTE-MAILRECOMMEND...RSS

FacebookMySpace Mixx Digg Reddit del.icio.us Furl Ma.gnolia SphereStumbleUponCLOSE

Emily Bazelon is a Slate senior editor and an editor of DoubleX. David C. Iglesias was the U.S. attorney for the District of New Mexico between 2001 and 2007. He is the author of the book In Justice: Inside the Scandal That Rocked the Bush Administration. Dahlia Lithwick is a Slate senior editor. Joseph Rich is the special counsel for federal agencies and litigation at the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law. He worked in the Department of Justice's Civil Rights Division from 1968-2005, serving as chief of the voting section for the last six years of his tenure there. Stuart Taylor Jr. is a senior writer and columnist for National Journal magazine.

SPONSORED CONTENT

• The Supreme Court Breakfast Table
  Ricci shouldn't have happened this way.
  Emily Bazelon | June 29, 2009
• Obama Law
  Loose legal ends.
  Emily Bazelon | Dec. 11, 2008
• The Supreme Court Breakfast Table
  Should there be a shooting range next to the Supreme Court gift shop?
  Walter Dellinger | June 27, 2008
• Search for more Breakfast Table, The articles
• Subscribe to the Breakfast Table, The RSS feed
• View our complete Breakfast Table, The archive