Source: https://case-law.vlex.com/vid/548-u-s-557-605933630
Timestamp: 2019-04-20 15:05:27+00:00

Document:
Party Name: Salim Ahmed HAMDAN, Petitioner, v. Donald H. RUMSFELD, Secretary of Defense, et al.
Pursuant to Congress' Joint Resolution authorizing the President to "use all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations, or persons he determines planned, authorized, committed, or aided" the September 11, 2001, al Qaeda [126 S.Ct. 2753] terrorist attacks (AUMF), U.S. Armed Forces invaded Afghanistan. During the hostilities, in 2001, militia forces captured petitioner Hamdan, a Yemeni national, and turned him over to the U.S. military, which, in 2002, transported him to prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Over a year later, the President deemed Hamdan eligible for trial by military commission for then-unspecified crimes. After another year, he was charged with conspiracy "to commit . . . offenses triable by military commission." In habeas and mandamus petitions, Hamdan asserted that the military commission lacks authority to try him because (1) neither congressional Act nor the common law of war supports trial by this commission for conspiracy, an offense that, Hamdan says, is not a violation of the law of war; and (2) the procedures adopted to try him violate basic tenets of military and international law, including the principle that a defendant must be permitted to see and hear the evidence against him.
that Ex parte Quirin, 317 U.S. 1, 63 S.Ct. 1, 87 L.Ed. 3, foreclosed any separation-of-powers objection to the military commission's jurisdiction, and that Hamdan's trial before the commission would violate neither the UCMJ nor Armed Forces regulations implementing the Geneva Conventions.
415 F.3d 33, reversed and remanded.
1. The Government's motion to dismiss, based on the Detainee Treatment Act of 2005 (DTA), is denied. DTA §1005(e)(1) provides that "no court . . . shall have jurisdiction to hear or consider . . . an application for . . . habeas corpus filed by . . . an alien detained . . . at Guantanamo Bay." Section 1005(h)(2) provides that §§1005(e)(2) and (3)which give the D. C. Circuit "exclusive" jurisdiction to review the final decisions of, respectively, combatant status review tribunals and military commissions"shall apply with respect to any claim whose review is . . . pending on" the DTA's effective date, as was Hamdan's case. The Government's argument that §§1005(e)(1) and (h) repeal this Court's jurisdiction to review the decision below is rebutted by ordinary principles of statutory construction. A negative inference may be drawn from Congress' failure to include §1005(e)(1) within the scope of §1005(h)(2). Cf., e.g., Lindh v. Murphy, 521 U.S. 320, 330, 117 S.Ct. 2059, 138 L.Ed.2d 481. "If . . . Congress was [126 S.Ct. 2754] reasonably concerned to ensure that [§§1005(e)(2) and (3)] be applied to pending cases, it should have been just as concerned about [§1005(e)(1)], unless it had the different intent that the latter [section] not be applied to the general run of pending cases." Id., at 329, 117 S.Ct. 2059. If anything, the evidence of deliberate omission is stronger here than it was in Lindh. The legislative history shows that Congress not only considered the respective temporal reaches of §§1005(e)(1), (2), and (3) together at every stage, but omitted paragraph (1) from its directive only after having rejected earlier proposed versions of the statute that would have included what is now paragraph (1) within that directive's scope. Congress' rejection of the very language that would have achieved the result the Government urges weighs heavily against the Government's interpretation. See Doe v. Chao, 540 U.S. 614, 621-623, 124 S.Ct. 1204, 157 L.Ed.2d 1122. Pp. 572-584.
the Armed Forces' efficient operation, are best served if the military justice system acts without regular interference from civilian courts, see id., at 752, 95 S.Ct. 1300, is inapt because Hamdan is not a service member. Second, the view that federal courts should respect the balance Congress struck when it created "an integrated system of military courts and review procedures" is inapposite, since the tribunal convened to try Hamdan is not part of that integrated system. Rather than Councilman, the most relevant precedent is Ex parte Quirin, where the Court, far from abstaining pending the conclusion of ongoing military proceedings, expedited its review because of (1) the public importance of the questions raised, (2) the Court's duty, in both peace and war, to preserve the constitutional safeguards of civil liberty, and (3) the public interest in a decision on those questions without delay, 317 U.S, at 19, 63 S.Ct. 1. The Government has identified no countervailing interest that would permit federal courts to depart from their general duty to exercise the jurisdiction Congress has conferred on them. Pp. 584-590.
commission, it contains no language authorizing that tribunal or any other at Guantanamo Bay. Together, the UCMJ, the AUMF, and the DTA at most acknowledge a general Presidential authority to convene military commissions in circumstances where justified under the Constitution and laws, including the law of war. Absent a more specific congressional authorization, this Court's task is, as it was in Quirin, to decide whether Hamdan's military commission is so justified. Pp. 590-595.
4. The military commission at issue lacks the power to proceed because its structure and procedures violate both the UCMJ and the four Geneva Conventions signed in 1949. Pp. 613-635.

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