Source: http://www.nzlii.org/nz/journals/CanterLawRw/2008/8.html
Timestamp: 2019-04-22 22:26:08+00:00

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GUANTANAMO BAY: LEGAL BLACK HOLE?
The title that this Law School has given me for today's talk is: 'Guantanamo Bay: Legal Black Hole'. Whoever picked that title, and it was not me, was kind enough to leave me some room by placing a question mark at the end of the sentence. I appreciate that; it sounds better than an exclamation point.
I know that the treatment of United States detainees in Guantanamo, and the United States' response to terror is of interest around the world. I will describe how the United States courts have dealt with Guantanamo Bay, and then you will have to decide for yourselves whether to place a question mark or an exclamation point for my remarks.
I would like to start by describing a conflict between the Executive and judicial branches of the United States government. Not long after the outbreak of war, the President of the United States altered the traditional understanding of civil liberties by finding that standard jury trials were incapable of meeting the necessities of wartime. In an effort to remedy this situation, the Executive determined that some defendants should be tried by special military courts rather than traditional juries. The United States Supreme Court rejected this claim, however, finding that the military courts lacked jurisdiction over the defendants who were United States citizens.
I begin on this historical note because it is important to remember that this is not the first age or time in which governments have considered how best to strike the delicate balance between protecting civil liberties, on the one hand, and protecting national security, on the other. There are distinctly novel aspects to the modern struggle against terrorism, but there is continuity in addition to change. History does not provide all of the legal answers, of course, but it often helps us in asking the correct legal questions.
Justice Jackson, again in dissent, contended that placement of the Court's imprimatur on the internment camps struck a deep blow against liberty. '[O]nce a judicial opinion rationalises such an order to show that it conforms to the Constitution ... the Court for all time has validated the principle of racial discrimination in criminal procedure and of transplanting American citizens'.6 The Korematsu opinion, Justice Jackson feared, 'lies about like a loaded weapon ready for the hand of any authority that can bring forward a plausible claim of an urgent need'.7 Since World War II, thankfully, no official has reached for that loaded weapon. Even in our current time of anxiety, it has not been proposed that we remove the liberty of an entire group solely because of their race, religion, ancestry, or even some combination thereof. Korematsu appears to remain a dead letter law.
The second of these cases, Rasul v Bush, involved non-citizens of the United States. Rasul was a habeas corpus suit brought on behalf of Guantanamo Bay detainees, including citizens of some Member States of the European Union, who were captured on a battlefield in Afghanistan. The Executive Branch asserted that these individuals had no right to challenge their detainment because they were non-citizens who were caught on a foreign battlefield and were being held outside of United States borders. The Supreme Court held that federal courts do in fact 'have jurisdiction to determine the legality of the Executive's potentially indefinite detention of individuals who claim to be wholly innocent of wrongdoing'.15 It held that Guantanamo is within the jurisdiction of the United States courts for this purpose.
After the Supreme Court decided Hamdan, Congress passed the Military Commissions Act of 2006,17 which some argue repealed all the federal courts' jurisdiction over the claims of those who have been designated enemy combatants. Prisoners in Guantanamo have filed habeas corpus challenges questioning their detainment. The Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit believed that it lacked jurisdiction over those cases under the Military Commissions Act and dismissed them.
A little over a month ago, the Supreme Court addressed this question in the opinion of Boumediene v Bush.18 The Court held that the United States' exercise of authority over Guantanamo Bay gave the detainees the constitutional right to bring claims of habeas corpus in federal district courts. The Court also held that the procedures authorised under the Military Commissions Act, which authorised tribunals to look into the detention of the Guantanamo detainees, were not an adequate substitute for habeas. In holding those procedures inadequate, the Court relied on numerous factors. It found persuasive the fact that many of the detainees had been seeking release for six years without relief, and that the detainees may be unable to present additional evidence in their favour at the tribunals.
I am going to take a step back to discuss another case involving a detainee at Guantanamo Bay. You recall that in Boumediene, the Supreme Court decided that the procedures established in the Military Commissions Act were not an adequate substitute for habeas corpus. Huzaifa Parhat is a Chinese Muslim who had been held at Guantanamo for more than six years. Unlike Boumediene, Parhat did not seek a writ of habeas corpus. Instead, he sought relief under the provisions of the Military Commissions Act. Parhat believed that the evidence that he was not an enemy combatant was so strong that he was willing to seek the more limited review under the Military Commissions Act, in hopes that his claim would be resolved more quickly, rather than wait to hear the results of the habeas proceeding.
Two short weeks after the Supreme Court handed down Boumediene v Bush, the District of Columbia Circuit decided Parhat's case.20 Much of the evidence in that case was classified, and so the opinion that was eventually released to the public was stripped of names and identifying information.
But if you are worried that the classified nature of the material was used as a shield to justify holding detainees, I must tell you that the District of Columbia Circuit completely agreed with Parhat, and ruled that he was not an enemy combatant. In the materials that they did release, they directed the government to either release Parhat, or present more reliable evidence at an expedited tribunal.
I think you must acknowledge that the United States Courts have taken a rather firm stand on the status of prisoners held at Guantanamo Bay. Hopefully, you will reconsider the appellation of 'legal black hole'.
I would like to now turn from the response of the United States to the responses of other nations. It is worth noting the dialogue between courts and legislatures in Germany, Canada, and Great Britain regarding the response to terrorism.
The Canadian Supreme Court has also grappled with the issue of Guantanamo Bay. You may recall that I mentioned that one of the reasons that the Supreme Court found the military tribunals to be inadequate is that the detainees lacked access to basic evidence about the cases against them. One Canadian detainee, Omar Khadr, has been detained at Guantanamo since 2002. In 2003, he was questioned by Canadian officials, who received substantial information from the United States government about the charges against Khadr. In crafting his defence, Khadr asked Canada to divulge all the information in its possession. The Canadian government objected, because the United States had specifically not authorised disclosure of those documents.
Canada has also had to grapple with its own set of terrorism related concerns. One area that has particular interest to the Canadian government deals with the area of immigration. As you can imagine, the Canadian people are not too keen on allowing terrorists and security threats into their country. But filtering out those who are terrorists has also created substantial problems.
Canada's Immigration and Refugee Protection Act22 allowed the Minister of Citizenship to issue a certificate declaring that a particular foreign national could be inadmissible on grounds of security. Because of the security concerns involved, the procedure for issuing the certificate required secrecy.
Once that certificate was issued, the foreign national could be detained. A judge would then have to examine the certificate; once the certificate was deemed reasonable, the determination could not be appealed.
In 2007, the Canadian Supreme Court heard a challenge to this procedure in Charkaoui v Canada (Citizen and Immigration).23 It found that this procedure violated the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedom because the secrecy involved in obtaining a certificate meant that a person would not have the opportunity to present evidence in his favor. The Court explained, '[w]hile the protection of Canada's national security and related intelligence sources constitutes a pressing and substantial objective ... [l]ess intrusive alternatives developed in Canada and abroad ... illustrate that the government can do more to protect the individual while keeping critical information confidential'. The Court required the Canadian government to retain all such information in the future and affirmed a postponement in order to give Charkaoui the time to prepare his defence.
Shortly after establishing this national database, Germany updated its counter-terrorism procedures. Germany had already granted intelligence some special powers with respect to investigating terrorism, but the new Act not only prolonged those powers for another five years, until 2012, but it expanded the investigative powers of German intelligence to obtain new records.26 The effects of this legislation, and any legal challenges to it, remain to be seen.
Great Britain has also been involved in combating terrorism. In December 2001, just three months after the attacks in the United States, Great Britain's Parliament passed the Anti-terrorism, Crime and Security Act 2001.27 That Act was a comprehensive effort to increase Britain's ability to identify terrorists and to seize the financial assets of terrorist organisations. Part 4 of the Act permitted the indefinite detention of non-British terrorist suspects without the need to charge or try them of any offence. Through 2003, Britain's Home Secretary had detained 16 foreign nationals in conjunction with Part 4.
Each of these decisions received considerable attention in the countries that issued them. That decisions addressing the intersection of liberty and security would be met with something other than universal acclaim is, of course, not surprising. Indeed, it would be surprising if decisions in this contentious area did not provoke strong reactions from people holding a wide array of different views. On some level, though, the disagreement that has greeted these decisions is not discouraging, but heartening. After all, it is evidence that democracy is flourishing, as people are engaged in serious discussions concerning the large questions that face our different countries. This is how it should be. And while we judges are sometimes tempted to view our decisions as definitively resolving matters, it is likely that our opinions represent only the start of the conversation, rather than the end of it.
Now, I would like to turn briefly to the road ahead. In the United States, though it has been almost six years since the September 11 attacks, our Nation is, I fear, far from nearing the end of the conflict. Indeed, I believe that we are closer to the beginning of the conflict than we are to its endpoint. That means, of course, that the judiciaries in various countries will continue to confront legal questions arising from terrorism.
There are serious issues under our system of government, with its three branches, each with great power. The judicial branch's authority to declare unlawful the decisions of the other two branches makes for trouble and dissension.
The United States Supreme Court's decision in Hamdan obviously leaves many questions unanswered regarding what trial procedures will be used to prosecute suspected terrorists.
The European Union has taken an active interest in the detainees who are being held in Guantanamo, whose fate will likely be affected. But whatever trial mechanisms ultimately emerge, we should be mindful that justice is best measured not by outcomes in specific cases, but rather by the procedures that produce those outcomes.
The United Nations Convention against torture which the United States has ratified prohibits the use of torture in absolute terms. It defines torture as 'Any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted ...'.38 Questions may well arise in our courts in the future regarding whether specific practices violate that definition of torture.
I mention these issues only to illustrate the difficult matters that courts may confront in the future. And they are remarkably difficult issues, in part because they go to the very core of what we mean when we use terms like 'citizen', 'nation', 'freedom', and 'liberty'. They also go to the core of the notion of separation of powers and to the authority of the judiciary in particular.
To be sure, the issues that the world confronts today are quite distinct from the issues of Lincoln's time. Nonetheless, his words serve as important reminders about the central place that liberty must occupy in a democracy, even during times of conflict. Ultimately, if we lose sight of liberty in an effort to defeat our enemies, the price may have been too high. That is true not least because we could compromise the very principles that initially spurred us to take up the battle.
[*] Associate Judge, Retired, Supreme Court of the United States. Justice Day O'Connor was a visiting Hotung Research Fellow at the School of Law, University of Canterbury during July 2008 and this is a lecture given by her at the School of Law on 18 July 2008.
  USSC 34; 71 US 2 (1866).
  USSC 34; 71 US 2, 120 (1866).
 Terminiello v Chicago,  USSC 77; 337 US 1 (1949), 37.
  USSC 43; 323 US 214 (1944).
  USSC 43; 323 US 214, 223 (1944).
  USSC 43; 323 US 214, 246 (1944).
 Authorisation for Use of Military Force Against Terrorists of 2001, 115 Stat.224.
  USSC 2730; 542 US 507 (2004).
  USSC 2809; 542 US 466 (2004).
  USSC 2730; 542 US 507, 533 (2004).
  USSC 2730; 542 US 507, 536 (2004).
  USSC 2809; 542 US 466, 485 (2004).
 548 US 557, 562 (2006).
 Military Commissions Act of 2006, 120 Stat. 2600.
 128 SCt 2229, 2277 (2008).
 Parhat v Gates, 532 F 3d 834 (2008).
 Canada (Minister of Justice) v Kadr  SCC 28, para 3.
 3 StR 269/04. The case can be found on the Federal Court of Justice's website: http://www.bundesgerichtshof.de.Entscheidungen(decisions).
 Germany enacted the Act on the Creation of a Joint Database of Police and Intelligence Agencies of the Federation and the States on 22 December 2007. The short title of this Act is the Joint Database Act (BUNDESGESETZBLATT 2006 I at 3409).
 On 5 January 2007 the Bundestag (German Parliament) adopted the Act Supplementing the Counter-Terrorism Act of 2002 (Gesetz zur Erganzung des Terrorismusbekampfungsgesetzes, 5 January 2007, BUNDESCESETZBLATT I at 2) which prolongs and expands counter-terrorism related investigative powers until January 2012.
 Anti-terrorism, Crime and Security Act 2001 (UK) c 24.
 A and others v Secretary of State for the Home Department; X and another v Secretary of State for the Home Department  UKHL 56;  3 All ER 169, para 74.
 A and others v Secretary of State for the Home Department; X and another v Secretary of State for the Home Department  UKHL 56;  3 All ER 169, para 76.
 Prevention of Terrorism Act 2005 (UK).
 See Secretary of State for the Home Department v JJ  UKHL 45; (2008) 1 AC 385 (HL); Secretary of State for the Home Department v E  UKHL 47; (2008) 1 AC 499 (HL); and Secretary of State for the Home Department v MB  EWCA Crim 2016; (2008) 1 AC 440 (HL).
 Australian Anti-Terrorism Act 2005 (Cth).
 Al-Kateb v Goodwin  HCA 37; (2004) 219 CLR 562.
 Al-Kateb v Goodwin  HCA 37; (2004) 219 CLR 562, 595.
 Al-Kateb v Goodwin  HCA 37; (2004) 219 CLR 562, 615.
 Al-Kateb v Goodwin  HCA 37; (2004) 219 CLR 562, 594.
 Convention Against Torture and Other Forms of Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, opened for signature 10 December 1984, 1465 UNTS 85, art 1 (entered into force 26 June 1987).

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