executive power

Among the cases the Supreme Court will consider reviewing in its private meeting tomorrow are two controversial cases arising out of the war on terror. Both question whether the president’s authority over detainees and information about their treatment is absolute, or reviewable by the federal courts.
The first and better-known case involves whether the executive branch [...]

Switzerland sent officials last month to visit the U.S. prison at Guantanamo Bay to collect information about four detainees it’s considering accepting for resettlement, The Associated Press reports.
The men being considered are reportedly two Chinese Muslim Uighurs, an Uzbek and a Palestinian. The men the United States has been trying to relocate have all been [...]

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 [...]

Despite President Obama’s previous criticism of former President George W. Bush’s “signing statements” that limit the president’s responsibility to comply with a bill passed by Congress, it turns out Obama has been doing much the same thing since he took office.  Charlie Savage reported in The New York Times on Sunday that Obama has issued [...]

I’d bet that Judge Ellen Huvelle of the U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C., is really mad now.
After telling the government last week that it has “no evidence” supporting its case against Mohammed Jawad — the Afghan teenager arrested for allegedly throwing a hand grenade at U.S. soldiers, tortured, then transferred to Guantanamo Bay where [...]

The Associated Press reports that a group of senior House Democrats are concerned that a recent “signing statement” issued by President Obama is  reminiscent of his predecessor’s reliance on the statements to undermine the will of Congress.
In a letter to the president, four Democrats including House Appropriations Committee Chairman David Obey said [they] were “surprised” [...]

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 [...]

The media have overlooked substance and context to focus on her style, but Judge Sonia Sotomayor has provided a window into her views on executive power and national security along the way.

Whereas Fox News appears to have read Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor’s 2003 lecture to Indiana University law students as an approval of broad executive power in the war on terror, Charlie Savage at The New York Times today has the opposite take.
According to Savage, Sotomayor “expressed skepticism” in that lecture “about the expanding government [...]

As reporters scoured the latest batch of documents dumped on the Senate Judiciary Committee Monday night for clues to Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor’s views on any matter that may potentially come before the Supreme Court, Fox News report on Tuesday that Sotomayor “appeared to justify the treatment of two men, Yaser Hamdi and Jose [...]