D.C. Circuit

The Supreme Court just announced that it will hear the case of the Chinese Muslim Uighurs — detainees at Guantanamo Bay cleared for release but still in prison there — to decide whether a court can order the government to release detainees into the United States.

In yet another case that questions the power of federal courts to rein in the government’s executive branch, the U.S. Circuit Court in Washington, D.C., on Tuesday issued a mandate that allows the government to send up to 150 Guantanamo detainees to other countries over the prisoners’ objections, Lyle Denniston at SCOTUSblog reports. The ruling [...]

On Thursday, the Supreme Court will meet to decide, among other things, whether to take up the case of Kiyemba v. Obama, in which the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Washington, D.C., ruled that federal courts do not have the power to order any Guantanamo detainees released into the United States.
As Lyle Denniston at [...]

Lyle Denniston at SCOTUSblog reminds us that today is the one-year anniversary of the Supreme Court’s landmark decision, Boumediene v. Bush, which confirmed that Guantanamo Bay detainees have the right to challenge their detentions in U.S. courts. Coincidentally, today the Washington Post also reported on its front page that the Obama administration has given up [...]

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit ruled today (pdf) that four British men who say they were tortured while imprisoned at Guantanamo Bay have no right to seek damages from U.S. government officials.
Former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and the ten other senior military officials named in the lawsuit have immunity, the [...]

Yesterday, I wrote about the 17 Chinese Uighurs’ petition to the Supreme Court challenging the decision of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit ruling that the federal courts have no authority to release the prisoners, even if they’ve been wrongfully imprisoned for years.
Well, yesterday the same D.C. Circuit Court issued another decision [...]

In another move that suggests the Obama Department of Justice is not making many big policy breaks with its predecessor when it comes to the legal rights of Guantanamo Bay detainees, the department filed a brief renewing the government’s motion to dismiss the case of Rasul v. Rumsfeld.
The case is very similar to the lawsuit [...]