Preparing for the Detainee Cases

The Supreme Court next Wednesday will hold a one-hour hearing on the legal rights of the prisoners at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. This will be the Court’s fourth full-scale review of legal questions arising out of the Bush Administration’s policy against terrorism, and the continuing legal controversy has grown increasingly complex.

In that light, David H. Remes of Washington’s Covington & Burling, who represents some of the detainees, has prepared the attached chronologies to put next week’s hearing into context. It provides details of the histories of current and prior Supreme Court cases on the subject, satellite cases brought by the prisoners under the Detainee Treatment Act, and a combined chronology. A helpful glossary of abbreviations is at the beginning. Note that some important events appear in more than one chronology.

We have also updated the Boumediene SCOTUSwiki page with Lyle Denniston’s thorough argument preview that discusses the arguments raised by the parties at both the cert. stage and the merits stage. That argument preview is here. Finally, as previously noted, the Court will be releasing same-day audio of oral argument on Wednesday. We will link to the audio stream as soon as it is available.