Source: http://law2.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/conlaw/hamdi.html
Timestamp: 2018-11-17 19:10:11
Document Index: 3905729

Matched Legal Cases: ['§9', '§4001', '§4001', '§4001', '§4001', '§4001', '§4001', '§4001', '§4001', '§4001', '§4001', '§4001', '§4001', '§4001', '§9', '§9', 'Art. 1', '§8']

YASER ESAM HAMDI v. DONALD H. RUMSFELD, SECRETARY OF DEFENSE, et al.
In June 2002, Hamdi’s father, Esam Fouad Hamdi, filed the present petition for a writ of habeas corpus in the Eastern District of Virginia, naming as petitioners his son and himself as next friend. The elder Hamdi alleges in the petition that he has had no contact with his son since the Government took custody of him in 2001, and that the Government has held his son “without access to legal counsel or notice of any charges pending against him.” The petition contends that Hamdi’s detention was not legally authorized. It argues that, “[a]s an American citizen, … Hamdi enjoys the full protections of the Constitution,” and that Hamdi’s detention in the United States without charges, access to an impartial tribunal, or assistance of counsel “violated and continue[s] to violate the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution.” The habeas petition asks that the court, among other things, (1) appoint counsel for Hamdi; (2) order respondents to cease interrogating him; (3) declare that he is being held in violation of the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments; (4) “[t]o the extent Respondents contest any material factual allegations in this Petition, schedule an evidentiary hearing, at which Petitioners may adduce proof in support of their allegations”; and (5) order that Hamdi be released from his “unlawful custody.” Although his habeas petition provides no details with regard to the factual circumstances surrounding his son’s capture and detention, Hamdi’s father has asserted in documents found elsewhere in the record that his son went to Afghanistan to do “relief work,” and that he had been in that country less than two months before September 11, 2001, and could not have received military training. The 20-year-old was traveling on his own for the first time, his father says, and “[b]ecause of his lack of experience, he was trapped in Afghanistan once that military campaign began....”
The United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit directed the District Court to consider “the most cautious procedures first”and to conduct a deferential inquiry into Hamdi’s status. It opined that “if Hamdi is indeed an ‘enemy combatant’ who was captured during hostilities in Afghanistan, the government’s present detention of him is a lawful one.”
On remand, the Government filed a response and a motion to dismiss the petition. It attached to its response a declaration from one Michael Mobbs (hereinafter “Mobbs Declaration”), who identified himself as Special Advisor to the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy. Mobbs indicated that in this position, he has been “substantially involved with matters related to the detention of enemy combatants in the current war against the al Qaeda terrorists and those who support and harbor them (including the Taliban).” App. 148. He expressed his “familiar[ity]” with Department of Defense and United States military policies and procedures applicable to the detention, control, and transfer of al Qaeda and Taliban personnel, and declared that “[b]ased upon my review of relevant records and reports, I am also familiar with the facts and circumstances related to the capture of … Hamdi and his detention by U.S. military forces.”
Mobbs then set forth what remains the sole evidentiary support that the Government has provided to the courts for Hamdi’s detention. The declaration states that Hamdi “traveled to Afghanistan” in July or August 2001, and that he thereafter “affiliated with a Taliban military unit and received weapons training.” Ibid. It asserts that Hamdi “remained with his Taliban unit following the attacks of September 11” and that, during the time when Northern Alliance forces were “engaged in battle with the Taliban,” “Hamdi’s Taliban unit surrendered” to those forces, after which he “surrender[ed] his Kalishnikov assault rifle” to them. The Mobbs Declaration also states that, because al Qaeda and the Taliban “were and are hostile forces engaged in armed conflict with the armed forces of the United States,” “individuals associated with” those groups “were and continue to be enemy combatants.” Mobbs states that Hamdi was labeled an enemy combatant “[b]ased upon his interviews and in light of his association with the Taliban.” According to the declaration, a series of “U.S. military screening team[s]” determined that Hamdi met “the criteria for enemy combatants,” and “a subsequent interview of Hamdi has confirmed that he surrendered and gave his firearm to Northern Alliance forces, which supports his classification as an enemy combatant.”
After the Government submitted this declaration, the Fourth Circuit directed the District Court to proceed in accordance with its earlier ruling and, specifically, to “ ‘consider the sufficiency of the Mobbs Declaration as an independent matter before proceeding further.’ ” The District Court found that the Mobbs Declaration fell “far short” of supporting Hamdi’s detention. It criticized the generic and hearsay nature of the affidavit, calling it “little more than the government’s ‘say-so.’ ”It ordered the Government to turn over numerous materials for in camera review, including copies of all of Hamdi’s statements and the notes taken from interviews with him that related to his reasons for going to Afghanistan and his activities therein; a list of all interrogators who had questioned Hamdi and their names and addresses; statements by members of the Northern Alliance regarding Hamdi’s surrender and capture; a list of the dates and locations of his capture and subsequent detentions; and the names and titles of the United States Government officials who made the determinations that Hamdi was an enemy combatant and that he should be moved to a naval brig. The court indicated that all of these materials were necessary for “meaningful judicial review” of whether Hamdi’s detention was legally authorized and whether Hamdi had received sufficient process to satisfy the Due Process Clause of the Constitution and relevant treaties or military regulations.
The Government sought to appeal the production order, and the District Court certified the question of whether the Mobbs Declaration, “ ‘standing alone, is sufficient as a matter of law to allow meaningful judicial review of [Hamdi’s] classification as an enemy combatant.’ ” The Fourth Circuit reversed....
We now vacate the judgment below and remand.
The threshold question before us is whether the Executive has the authority to detain citizens who qualify as “enemy combatants.” There is some debate as to the proper scope of this term, and the Government has never provided any court with the full criteria that it uses in classifying individuals as such. It has made clear, however, that, for purposes of this case, the “enemy combatant” that it is seeking to detain is an individual who, it alleges, was “ ‘part of or supporting forces hostile to the United States or coalition partners’ ” in Afghanistan and who “ ‘engaged in an armed conflict against the United States’ ” there. We therefore answer only the narrow question before us: whether the detention of citizens falling within that definition is authorized.
The Government maintains that no explicit congressional authorization is required, because the Executive possesses plenary authority to detain pursuant to Article II of the Constitution. We do not reach the question whether Article II provides such authority, however, because we agree with the Government’s alternative position, that Congress has in fact authorized Hamdi’s detention, through the AUMF....
The capture and detention of lawful combatants and the capture, detention, and trial of unlawful combatants, by “universal agreement and practice,” are “important incident[s] of war.” Ex parte Quirin. The purpose of detention is to prevent captured individuals from returning to the field of battle and taking up arms once again....
Hamdi objects, nevertheless, that Congress has not authorized the indefinite detention to which he is now subject. The Government responds that “the detention of enemy combatants during World War II was just as ‘indefinite’ while that war was being fought.” We take Hamdi’s objection to be not to the lack of certainty regarding the date on which the conflict will end, but to the substantial prospect of perpetual detention. We recognize that the national security underpinnings of the “war on terror,” although crucially important, are broad and malleable. As the Government concedes, “given its unconventional nature, the current conflict is unlikely to end with a formal cease-fire agreement.” The prospect Hamdi raises is therefore not far-fetched. If the Government does not consider this unconventional war won for two generations, and if it maintains during that time that Hamdi might, if released, rejoin forces fighting against the United States, then the position it has taken throughout the litigation of this case suggests that Hamdi’s detention could last for the rest of his life.
It is a clearly established principle of the law of war that detention may last no longer than active hostilities. See Article 118 of the Geneva Convention (III) Relative to the Treatment of Prisoners of War, Aug. 12, 1949 (“Prisoners of war shall be released and repatriated without delay after the cessation of active hostilities”)....
Hamdi contends that the AUMF does not authorize indefinite or perpetual detention. Certainly, we agree that indefinite detention for the purpose of interrogation is not authorized. Further, we understand Congress’ grant of authority for the use of “necessary and appropriate force” to include the authority to detain for the duration of the relevant conflict, and our understanding is based on longstanding law-of-war principles. If the practical circumstances of a given conflict are entirely unlike those of the conflicts that informed the development of the law of war, that understanding may unravel. But that is not the situation we face as of this date. Active combat operations against Taliban fighters apparently are ongoing in Afghanistan..... If the record establishes that United States troops are still involved in active combat in Afghanistan, those detentions are part of the exercise of “necessary and appropriate force,” and therefore are authorized by the AUMF.
Ex parte Milligan, 4 Wall. 2, 125 (1866), does not undermine our holding about the Government’s authority to seize enemy combatants, as we define that term today. In that case, the Court made repeated reference to the fact that its inquiry into whether the military tribunal had jurisdiction to try and punish Milligan turned in large part on the fact that Milligan was not a prisoner of war, but a resident of Indiana arrested while at home there. That fact was central to its conclusion. Had Milligan been captured while he was assisting Confederate soldiers by carrying a rifle against Union troops on a Confederate battlefield, the holding of the Court might well have been different. The Court’s repeated explanations that Milligan was not a prisoner of war suggest that had these different circumstances been present he could have been detained under military authority for the duration of the conflict, whether or not he was a citizen....
Quirin was a unanimous opinion. It both postdates and clarifies Milligan, providing us with the most apposite precedent that we have on the question of whether citizens may be detained in such circumstances. Brushing aside such precedent–particularly when doing so gives rise to a host of new questions never dealt with by this Court–is unjustified and unwise.....
Even in cases in which the detention of enemy combatants is legally authorized, there remains the question of what process is constitutionally due to a citizen who disputes his enemy-combatant status. Hamdi argues that he is owed a meaningful and timely hearing and that “extra-judicial detention [that] begins and ends with the submission of an affidavit based on third-hand hearsay” does not comport with the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments. The Government counters that any more process than was provided below would be both unworkable and “constitutionally intolerable.” Our resolution of this dispute requires a careful examination both of the writ of habeas corpus, which Hamdi now seeks to employ as a mechanism of judicial review, and of the Due Process Clause, which informs the procedural contours of that mechanism in this instance.
Though they reach radically different conclusions on the process that ought to attend the present proceeding, the parties begin on common ground. All agree that, absent suspension, the writ of habeas corpus remains available to every individual detained within the United States. U.S. Const., Art. I, §9, cl. 2 (“The Privilege of the Writ of Habeas Corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in Cases of Rebellion or Invasion the public Safety may require it”). Only in the rarest of circumstances has Congress seen fit to suspend the writ. At all other times, it has remained a critical check on the Executive, ensuring that it does not detain individuals except in accordance with law. All agree suspension of the writ has not occurred here....
First, the Government urges the adoption of the Fourth Circuit’s holding below–that because it is “undisputed” that Hamdi’s seizure took place in a combat zone, the habeas determination can be made purely as a matter of law, with no further hearing or factfinding necessary. This argument is easily rejected. As the dissenters from the denial of rehearing en banc noted, the circumstances surrounding Hamdi’s seizure cannot in any way be characterized as “undisputed,” as “those circumstances are neither conceded in fact, nor susceptible to concession in law, because Hamdi has not been permitted to speak for himself or even through counsel as to those circumstances.” Further, the “facts” that constitute the alleged concession are insufficient to support Hamdi’s detention. Under the definition of enemy combatant that we accept today as falling within the scope of Congress’ authorization, Hamdi would need to be “part of or supporting forces hostile to the United States or coalition partners” and “engaged in an armed conflict against the United States” to justify his detention in the United States for the duration of the relevant conflict.The habeas petition states only that “[w]hen seized by the United States Government, Mr. Hamdi resided in Afghanistan.” An assertion that one resided in a country in which combat operations are taking place is not a concession that one was “captured in a zone of active combat operations in a foreign theater of war,” and certainly is not a concession that one was “part of or supporting forces hostile to the United States or coalition partners” and “engaged in an armed conflict against the United States.” Accordingly, we reject any argument that Hamdi has made concessions that eliminate any right to further process.
The Government’s second argument requires closer consideration. This is the argument that further factual exploration is unwarranted and inappropriate in light of the extraordinary constitutional interests at stake. Under the Government’s most extreme rendition of this argument, “[r]espect for separation of powers and the limited institutional capabilities of courts in matters of military decision-making in connection with an ongoing conflict” ought to eliminate entirely any individual process, restricting the courts to investigating only whether legal authorization exists for the broader detention scheme. At most, the Government argues, courts should review its determination that a citizen is an enemy combatant under a very deferential “some evidence” standard. Under this review, a court would assume the accuracy of the Government’s articulated basis for Hamdi’s detention, as set forth in the Mobbs Declaration, and assess only whether that articulated basis was a legitimate one.
In response, Hamdi emphasizes that this Court consistently has recognized that an individual challenging his detention may not be held at the will of the Executive without recourse to some proceeding before a neutral tribunal to determine whether the Executive’s asserted justifications for that detention have basis in fact and warrant in law.
Both of these positions highlight legitimate concerns. And both emphasize the tension that often exists between the autonomy that the Government asserts is necessary in order to pursue effectively a particular goal and the process that a citizen contends he is due before he is deprived of a constitutional right. The ordinary mechanism that we use for balancing such serious competing interests, and for determining the procedures that are necessary to ensure that a citizen is not “deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law,” U.S. Const., Amdt. 5, is the test that we articulated in Mathews v. Eldridge (1976). Mathews dictates that the process due in any given instance is determined by weighing “the private interest that will be affected by the official action” against the Government’s asserted interest, “including the function involved” and the burdens the Government would face in providing greater process. The Mathews calculus then contemplates a judicious balancing of these concerns, through an analysis of “the risk of an erroneous deprivation” of the private interest if the process were reduced and the “probable value, if any, of additional or substitute safeguards.” We take each of these steps in turn.
It is beyond question that substantial interests lie on both sides of the scale in this case. Hamdi’s “private interest … affected by the official action” is the most elemental of liberty interests–the interest in being free from physical detention by one’s own government. “We have always been careful not to ‘minimize the importance and fundamental nature’ of the individual’s right to liberty,”and we will not do so today.
Nor is the weight on this side of the Mathews scale offset by the circumstances of war or the accusation of treasonous behavior, for “[i]t is clear that commitment for any purpose constitutes a significant deprivation of liberty that requires due process protection,” and at this stage in the Mathews calculus, we consider the interest of the erroneously detained individual. Indeed, the risk of erroneous deprivation of a citizen’s liberty in the absence of sufficient process here is very real. Moreover, as critical as the Government’s interest may be in detaining those who actually pose an immediate threat to the national security of the United States during ongoing international conflict, history and common sense teach us that an unchecked system of detention carries the potential to become a means for oppression and abuse of others who do not present that sort of threat. Because we live in a society in which “[m]ere public intolerance or animosity cannot constitutionally justify the deprivation of a person’s physical liberty,” our starting point for the Mathews v. Eldridge analysis is unaltered by the allegations surrounding the particular detainee or the organizations with which he is alleged to have associated. We reaffirm today the fundamental nature of a citizen’s right to be free from involuntary confinement by his own government without due process of law, and we weigh the opposing governmental interests against the curtailment of liberty that such confinement entails.
On the other side of the scale are the weighty and sensitive governmental interests in ensuring that those who have in fact fought with the enemy during a war do not return to battle against the United States. As discussed above, the law of war and the realities of combat may render such detentions both necessary and appropriate, and our due process analysis need not blink at those realities. Without doubt, our Constitution recognizes that core strategic matters of warmaking belong in the hands of those who are best positioned and most politically accountable for making them.
Striking the proper constitutional balance here is of great importance to the Nation during this period of ongoing combat. But it is equally vital that our calculus not give short shrift to the values that this country holds dear or to the privilege that is American citizenship. It is during our most challenging and uncertain moments that our Nation’s commitment to due process is most severely tested; and it is in those times that we must preserve our commitment at home to the principles for which we fight abroad. See United States v. Robel (“It would indeed be ironic if, in the name of national defense, we would sanction the subversion of one of those liberties … which makes the defense of the Nation worthwhile”).
With due recognition of these competing concerns, we believe that neither the process proposed by the Government nor the process apparently envisioned by the District Court below strikes the proper constitutional balance when a United States citizen is detained in the United States as an enemy combatant. That is, “the risk of erroneous deprivation” of a detainee’s liberty interest is unacceptably high under the Government’s proposed rule, while some of the “additional or substitute procedural safeguards” suggested by the District Court are unwarranted in light of their limited “probable value” and the burdens they may impose on the military in such cases. .
We therefore hold that a citizen-detainee seeking to challenge his classification as an enemy combatant must receive notice of the factual basis for his classification, and a fair opportunity to rebut the Government’s factual assertions before a neutral decisionmaker. “For more than a century the central meaning of procedural due process has been clear: ‘Parties whose rights are to be affected are entitled to be heard; and in order that they may enjoy that right they must first be notified.’ It is equally fundamental that the right to notice and an opportunity to be heard ‘must be granted at a meaningful time and in a meaningful manner.’ ” These essential constitutional promises may not be eroded.
At the same time, the exigencies of the circumstances may demand that, aside from these core elements, enemy combatant proceedings may be tailored to alleviate their uncommon potential to burden the Executive at a time of ongoing military conflict. Hearsay, for example, may need to be accepted as the most reliable available evidence from the Government in such a proceeding. Likewise, the Constitution would not be offended by a presumption in favor of the Government’s evidence, so long as that presumption remained a rebuttable one and fair opportunity for rebuttal were provided. Thus, once the Government puts forth credible evidence that the habeas petitioner meets the enemy-combatant criteria, the onus could shift to the petitioner to rebut that evidence with more persuasive evidence that he falls outside the criteria. A burden-shifting scheme of this sort would meet the goal of ensuring that the errant tourist, embedded journalist, or local aid worker has a chance to prove military error while giving due regard to the Executive once it has put forth meaningful support for its conclusion that the detainee is in fact an enemy combatant. In the words of Mathews, process of this sort would sufficiently address the “risk of erroneous deprivation” of a detainee’s liberty interest while eliminating certain procedures that have questionable additional value in light of the burden on the Government.
We think it unlikely that this basic process will have the dire impact on the central functions of warmaking that the Government forecasts. The parties agree that initial captures on the battlefield need not receive the process we have discussed here; that process is due only when the determination is made to continue to hold those who have been seized.....This focus meddles little, if at all, in the strategy or conduct of war, inquiring only into the appropriateness of continuing to detain an individual claimed to have taken up arms against the United States. While we accord the greatest respect and consideration to the judgments of military authorities in matters relating to the actual prosecution of a war, and recognize that the scope of that discretion necessarily is wide, it does not infringe on the core role of the military for the courts to exercise their own time-honored and constitutionally mandated roles of reviewing and resolving claims like those presented here.
In so holding, we necessarily reject the Government’s assertion that separation of powers principles mandate a heavily circumscribed role for the courts in such circumstances. Indeed, the position that the courts must forgo any examination of the individual case and focus exclusively on the legality of the broader detention scheme cannot be mandated by any reasonable view of separation of powers, as this approach serves only to condense power into a single branch of government. We have long since made clear that a state of war is not a blank check for the President when it comes to the rights of the Nation’s citizens. Youngstown Sheet & Tube. Whatever power the United States Constitution envisions for the Executive in its exchanges with other nations or with enemy organizations in times of conflict, it most assuredly envisions a role for all three branches when individual liberties are at stake.....
Because we conclude that due process demands some system for a citizen detainee to refute his classification, the proposed “some evidence” standard is inadequate. Any process in which the Executive’s factual assertions go wholly unchallenged or are simply presumed correct without any opportunity for the alleged combatant to demonstrate otherwise falls constitutionally short.....
Plainly, the “process” Hamdi has received is not that to which he is entitled under the Due Process Clause.
The Government has failed to demonstrate that the Force Resolution authorizes the detention complained of here even on the facts the Government claims. If the Government raises nothing further than the record now shows, the Non-Detention Act entitles Hamdi to be released....
The fact that Congress intended to guard against a repetition of the World War II internments when it repealed the 1950 statute and gave us §4001(a) provides a powerful reason to think that §4001(a) was meant to require clear congressional authorization before any citizen can be placed in a cell. It is not merely that the legislative history shows that §4001(a) was thought necessary in anticipation of times just like the present, in which the safety of the country is threatened. To appreciate what is most significant, one must only recall that the internments of the 1940’s were accomplished by Executive action....
Second, when Congress passed §4001(a) it was acting in light of an interpretive regime that subjected enactments limiting liberty in wartime to the requirement of a clear statement and it presumably intended §4001(a) to be read accordingly....
Finally, even if history had spared us the cautionary example of the internments in World War II, even if there had been no Korematsu, there would be a compelling reason to read §4001(a) to demand manifest authority to detain before detention is authorized. The defining character of American constitutional government is its constant tension between security and liberty, serving both by partial helpings of each. In a government of separated powers, deciding finally on what is a reasonable degree of guaranteed liberty whether in peace or war (or some condition in between) is not well entrusted to the Executive Branch of Government, whose particular responsibility is to maintain security. For reasons of inescapable human nature, the branch of the Government asked to counter a serious threat is not the branch on which to rest the Nation’s entire reliance in striking the balance between the will to win and the cost in liberty on the way to victory; the responsibility for security will naturally amplify the claim that security legitimately raises. A reasonable balance is more likely to be reached on the judgment of a different branch, just as Madison said in remarking that “the constant aim is to divide and arrange the several offices in such a manner as that each may be a check on the other–that the private interest of every individual may be a sentinel over the public rights.” Hence the need for an assessment by Congress before citizens are subject to lockup, and likewise the need for a clearly expressed congressional resolution of the competing claims.
Under this principle of reading §4001(a) robustly to require a clear statement of authorization to detain, none of the Government’s arguments suffices to justify Hamdi’s detention.....This legislative history indicates that Congress was aware that §4001(a) would limit the Executive’s power to detain citizens in wartime to protect national security, and it is fair to say that the prohibition was thus intended to extend not only to the exercise of power to vindicate the interests underlying domestic criminal law, but to statutorily unauthorized detention by the Executive for reasons of security in wartime, just as Hamdi claims....
Because the Force Resolution authorizes the use of military force in acts of war by the United States, the argument goes, it is reasonably clear that the military and its Commander in Chief are authorized to deal with enemy belligerents according to the treaties and customs known collectively as the laws of war. Accordingly, the United States may detain captured enemies, and Ex parte Quirin (1942), may perhaps be claimed for the proposition that the American citizenship of such a captive does not as such limit the Government’s power to deal with him under the usages of war. Thus, the Government here repeatedly argues that Hamdi’s detention amounts to nothing more than customary detention of a captive taken on the field of battle: if the usages of war are fairly authorized by the Force Resolution, Hamdi’s detention is authorized for purposes of §4001(a).
There is no need, however, to address the merits of such an argument in all possible circumstances. For now it is enough to recognize that the Government’s stated legal position in its campaign against the Taliban (among whom Hamdi was allegedly captured) is apparently at odds with its claim here to be acting in accordance with customary law of war and hence to be within the terms of the Force Resolution in its detention of Hamdi. In a statement of its legal position cited in its brief, the Government says that “the Geneva Convention applies to the Taliban detainees.” Hamdi presumably is such a detainee, since according to the Government’s own account, he was taken bearing arms on the Taliban side of a field of battle in Afghanistan. He would therefore seem to qualify for treatment as a prisoner of war under the Third Geneva Convention, to which the United States is a party.
By holding him incommunicado, however, the Government obviously has not been treating him as a prisoner of war, and in fact the Government claims that no Taliban detainee is entitled to prisoner of war status. This treatment appears to be a violation of the Geneva Convention provision that even in cases of doubt, captives are entitled to be treated as prisoners of war “until such time as their status has been determined by a competent tribunal....” The Government answers that the President’s determination that Taliban detainees do not qualify as prisoners of war is conclusive as to Hamdi’s status and removes any doubt that would trigger application of the Convention’s tribunal requirement....
Since the Government has given no reason either to deflect the application of §4001(a) or to hold it to be satisfied, I need to go no further; the Government hints of a constitutional challenge to the statute, but it presents none here. I will, however, stray across the line between statutory and constitutional territory just far enough to note the weakness of the Government’s mixed claim of inherent, extrastatutory authority under a combination of Article II of the Constitution and the usages of war. It is in fact in this connection that the Government developed its argument that the exercise of war powers justifies the detention, and what I have just said about its inadequacy applies here as well. Beyond that, it is instructive to recall Justice Jackson’s observation that the President is not Commander in Chief of the country, only of the military.
There may be room for one qualification to Justice Jackson’s statement, however: in a moment of genuine emergency, when the Government must act with no time for deliberation, the Executive may be able to detain a citizen if there is reason to fear he is an imminent threat to the safety of the Nation and its people (though I doubt there is any want of statutory authority). This case, however, does not present that question, because an emergency power of necessity must at least be limited by the emergency; Hamdi has been locked up for over two years.
Whether insisting on the careful scrutiny of emergency claims or on a vigorous reading of §4001(a), we are heirs to a tradition given voice 800 years ago by Magna Carta, which, on the barons’ insistence, confined executive power by “the law of the land.”
Because I find Hamdi’s detention forbidden by §4001(a) and unauthorized by the Force Resolution, I would not reach any questions of what process he may be due in litigating disputed issues in a proceeding under the habeas statute or prior to the habeas enquiry itself. For me, it suffices that the Government has failed to justify holding him in the absence of a further Act of Congress, criminal charges, a showing that the detention conforms to the laws of war, or a demonstration that §4001(a) is unconstitutional. I would therefore vacate the judgment of the Court of Appeals and remand for proceedings consistent with this view....
Petitioner, a presumed American citizen, has been imprisoned without charge or hearing in the Norfolk and Charleston Naval Brigs for more than two years, on the allegation that he is an enemy combatant who bore arms against his country for the Taliban. His father claims to the contrary, that he is an inexperienced aid worker caught in the wrong place at the wrong time. This case brings into conflict the competing demands of national security and our citizens’ constitutional right to personal liberty. Although I share the Court’s evident unease as it seeks to reconcile the two, I do not agree with its resolution.
Where the Government accuses a citizen of waging war against it, our constitutional tradition has been to prosecute him in federal court for treason or some other crime. Where the exigencies of war prevent that, the Constitution’s Suspension Clause, Art. I, §9, cl. 2, allows Congress to relax the usual protections temporarily. Absent suspension, however, the Executive’s assertion of military exigency has not been thought sufficient to permit detention without charge. No one contends that the congressional Authorization for Use of Military Force, on which the Government relies to justify its actions here, is an implementation of the Suspension Clause. Accordingly, I would reverse the decision below.
“Of great importance to the public is the preservation of this personal liberty: for if once it were left in the power of any, the highest, magistrate to imprison arbitrarily whomever he or his officers thought proper … there would soon be an end of all other rights and immunities. … To bereave a man of life, or by violence to confiscate his estate, without accusation or trial, would be so gross and notorious an act of despotism, as must at once convey the alarm of tyranny throughout the whole kingdom. But confinement of the person, by secretly hurrying him to gaol, where his sufferings are unknown or forgotten; is a less public, a less striking, and therefore a more dangerous engine of arbitrary government. …
“To make imprisonment lawful, it must either be, by process from the courts of judicature, or by warrant from some legal officer, having authority to commit to prison; which warrant must be in writing, under the hand and seal of the magistrate, and express the causes of the commitment, in order to be examined into (if necessary) upon a habeas corpus. If there be no cause expressed, the gaoler is not bound to detain the prisoner. For the law judges in this respect, … that it is unreasonable to send a prisoner, and not to signify withal the crimes alleged against him.”
These words were well known to the Founders. Hamilton quoted from this very passage in The Federalist No. 84. The two ideas central to Blackstone’s understanding–due process as the right secured, and habeas corpus as the instrument by which due process could be insisted upon by a citizen illegally imprisoned–found expression in the Constitution’s Due Process and Suspension Clauses.
The gist of the Due Process Clause, as understood at the founding and since, was to force the Government to follow those common-law procedures traditionally deemed necessary before depriving a person of life, liberty, or property. When a citizen was deprived of liberty because of alleged criminal conduct, those procedures typically required committal by a magistrate followed by indictment and trial....
To be sure, certain types of permissible noncriminal detention–that is, those not dependent upon the contention that the citizen had committed a criminal act–did not require the protections of criminal procedure. However, these fell into a limited number of well-recognized exceptions–civil commitment of the mentally ill, for example, and temporary detention in quarantine of the infectious. It is unthinkable that the Executive could render otherwise criminal grounds for detention noncriminal merely by disclaiming an intent to prosecute, or by asserting that it was incapacitating dangerous offenders rather than punishing wrongdoing....
Justice O’Connor, writing for a plurality of this Court, asserts that captured enemy combatants (other than those suspected of war crimes) have traditionally been detained until the cessation of hostilities and then released. That is probably an accurate description of wartime practice with respect to enemy aliens. The tradition with respect to American citizens, however, has been quite different. Citizens aiding the enemy have been treated as traitors subject to the criminal process.....
The only citizen other than Hamdi known to be imprisoned in connection with military hostilities in Afghanistan against the United States was subjected to criminal process and convicted upon a guilty plea. See United States v. Lindh, 212 F. Supp. 2d 541 (ED Va. 2002)....
Our Federal Constitution contains a provision explicitly permitting suspension, but limiting the situations in which it may be invoked: “The privilege of the Writ of Habeas Corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in Cases of Rebellion or Invasion the public Safety may require it.” Art. I, §9, cl. 2. Although this provision does not state that suspension must be effected by, or authorized by, a legislative act, it has been so understood, consistent with English practice and the Clause’s placement in Article I. ...The Suspension Clause was by design a safety valve, the Constitution’s only “express provision for exercise of extraordinary authority because of a crisis....”
Thus, criminal process was viewed as the primary means–and the only means absent congressional action suspending the writ–not only to punish traitors, but to incapacitate them.
The proposition that the Executive lacks indefinite wartime detention authority over citizens is consistent with the Founders’ general mistrust of military power permanently at the Executive’s disposal. In the Founders’ view, the “blessings of liberty” were threatened by “those military establishments which must gradually poison its very fountain.” No fewer than 10 issues of the Federalist were devoted in whole or part to allaying fears of oppression from the proposed Constitution’s authorization of standing armies in peacetime. Many safeguards in the Constitution reflect these concerns. Congress’s authority “[t]o raise and support Armies” was hedged with the proviso that “no Appropriation of Money to that Use shall be for a longer Term than two Years.” U.S. Const., Art. 1, §8, cl. 12. Except for the actual command of military forces, all authorization for their maintenance and all explicit authorization for their use is placed in the control of Congress under Article I, rather than the President under Article II. As Hamilton explained, the President’s military authority would be “much inferior” to that of the British King:
A view of the Constitution that gives the Executive authority to use military force rather than the force of law against citizens on American soil flies in the face of the mistrust that engendered these provisions....
But even if Quirin gave a correct description of Milligan, or made an irrevocable revision of it, Quirin would still not justify denial of the writ here. In Quirin it was uncontested that the petitioners were members of enemy forces. They were “admitted enemy invaders,” (emphasis added), and it was “undisputed” that they had landed in the United States in service of German forces. The specific holding of the Court was only that, “upon the conceded facts,” the petitioners were “plainly within [the] boundaries” of military jurisdiction. But where those jurisdictional facts are not conceded–where the petitioner insists that he is not a belligerent–Quirin left the pre-existing law in place: Absent suspension of the writ, a citizen held where the courts are open is entitled either to criminal trial or to a judicial decree requiring his release.
It follows from what I have said that Hamdi is entitled to a habeas decree requiring his release unless (1) criminal proceedings are promptly brought, or (2) Congress has suspended the writ of habeas corpus. A suspension of the writ could, of course, lay down conditions for continued detention, similar to those that today’s opinion prescribes under the Due Process Clause. But there is a world of difference between the people’s representatives’ determining the need for that suspension (and prescribing the conditions for it), and this Court’s doing so....
Several limitations give my views in this matter a relatively narrow compass. They apply only to citizens, accused of being enemy combatants, who are detained within the territorial jurisdiction of a federal court. This is not likely to be a numerous group; currently we know of only two, Hamdi and Jose Padilla. Where the citizen is captured outside and held outside the United States, the constitutional requirements may be different....
I frankly do not know whether these tools are sufficient to meet the Government’s security needs, including the need to obtain intelligence through interrogation. It is far beyond my competence, or the Court’s competence, to determine that. But it is not beyond Congress’s. If the situation demands it, the Executive can ask Congress to authorize suspension of the writ–which can be made subject to whatever conditions Congress deems appropriate, including even the procedural novelties invented by the plurality today. To be sure, suspension is limited by the Constitution to cases of rebellion or invasion. But whether the attacks of September 11, 2001, constitute an “invasion,” and whether those attacks still justify suspension several years later, are questions for Congress rather than this Court. If civil rights are to be curtailed during wartime, it must be done openly and democratically, as the Constitution requires, rather than by silent erosion through an opinion of this Court.
The Founders well understood the difficult tradeoff between safety and freedom. “Safety from external danger,” Hamilton declared,
“is the most powerful director of national conduct. Even the ardent love of liberty will, after a time, give way to its dictates. The violent destruction of life and property incident to war; the continual effort and alarm attendant on a state of continual danger, will compel nations the most attached to liberty, to resort for repose and security to institutions which have a tendency to destroy their civil and political rights. To be more safe, they, at length, become willing to run the risk of being less free.”
The Executive Branch, acting pursuant to the powers vested in the President by the Constitution and with explicit congressional approval, has determined that Yaser Hamdi is an enemy combatant and should be detained. This detention falls squarely within the Federal Government’s war powers, and we lack the expertise and capacity to second-guess that decision. As such, petitioners’ habeas challenge should fail, and there is no reason to remand the case. The plurality reaches a contrary conclusion by failing adequately to consider basic principles of the constitutional structure as it relates to national security and foreign affairs and by using the balancing scheme of Mathews v. Eldridge. I do not think that the Federal Government’s war powers can be balanced away by this Court. Arguably, Congress could provide for additional procedural protections, but until it does, we have no right to insist upon them. But even if I were to agree with the general approach the plurality takes, I could not accept the particulars. The plurality utterly fails to account for the Government’s compelling interests and for our own institutional inability to weigh competing concerns correctly. I respectfully dissent....
The Founders intended that the President have primary responsibility–along with the necessary power–to protect the national security and to conduct the Nation’s foreign relations. They did so principally because the structural advantages of a unitary Executive are essential in these domains. “Energy in the executive is a leading character in the definition of good government. It is essential to the protection of the community against foreign attacks.” The Federalist No. 70, p. 471 (A. Hamilton). The principle “ingredien[t]” for “energy in the executive” is “unity.” This is because “[d]ecision, activity, secrecy, and dispatch will generally characterise the proceedings of one man, in a much more eminent degree, than the proceedings of any greater number.”
These structural advantages are most important in the national-security and foreign-affairs contexts. “Of all the cares or concerns of government, the direction of war most peculiarly demands those qualities which distinguish the exercise of power by a single hand.”
This Court has long recognized these features and has accordingly held that the President has constitutional authority to protect the national security and that this authority carries with it broad discretion....
I acknowledge that the question whether Hamdi’s executive detention is lawful is a question properly resolved by the Judicial Branch, though the question comes to the Court with the strongest presumptions in favor of the Government. The plurality agrees that Hamdi’s detention is lawful if he is an enemy combatant. But the question whether Hamdi is actually an enemy combatant is “of a kind for which the Judiciary has neither aptitude, facilities nor responsibility and which has long been held to belong in the domain of political power not subject to judicial intrusion or inquiry.” That is, although it is appropriate for the Court to determine the judicial question whether the President has the asserted authority, we lack the information and expertise to question whether Hamdi is actually an enemy combatant, a question the resolution of which is committed to other branches.
“The war power of the national government is ‘the power to wage war successfully.’ ” It follows that this power “is not limited to victories in the field, but carries with it the inherent power to guard against the immediate renewal of the conflict.”
The plurality, however, qualifies its recognition of the President’s authority to detain enemy combatants in the war on terrorism in ways that are at odds with our precedent. Thus, the plurality relies primarily on Article 118 of the Geneva Convention (III) Relative to the Treatment of Prisoners of War, Aug. 12, 1949, for the proposition that “[i]t is a clearly established principle of the law of war that detention may last no longer than active hostilities.” But I do not believe that we may diminish the Federal Government’s war powers by reference to a treaty and certainly not to a treaty that does not apply.
Accordingly, the President’s action here is “supported by the strongest of presumptions and the widest latitude of judicial interpretation.” The question becomes whether the Federal Government (rather than the President acting alone) has power to detain Hamdi as an enemy combatant. More precisely, we must determine whether the Government may detain Hamdi given the procedures that were used.
I agree with the plurality that the Federal Government has power to detain those that the Executive Branch determines to be enemy combatants. But I do not think that the plurality has adequately explained the breadth of the President’s authority to detain enemy combatants, an authority that includes making virtually conclusive factual findings. In my view, the structural considerations discussed above, as recognized in our precedent, demonstrate that we lack the capacity and responsibility to second-guess this determination....
The Government’s asserted authority to detain an individual that the President has determined to be an enemy combatant, at least while hostilities continue, comports with the Due Process Clause. As these cases also show, the Executive’s decision that a detention is necessary to protect the public need not and should not be subjected to judicial second-guessing. Indeed, at least in the context of enemy-combatant determinations, this would defeat the unity, secrecy, and dispatch that the Founders believed to be so important to the warmaking function.
I therefore cannot agree with Justice Scalia’s conclusion that the Government must choose between using standard criminal processes and suspending the writ....
Accordingly, I conclude that the Government’s detention of Hamdi as an enemy combatant does not violate the Constitution. By detaining Hamdi, the President, in the prosecution of a war and authorized by Congress, has acted well within his authority. Hamdi thereby received all the process to which he was due under the circumstances. I therefore believe that this is no occasion to balance the competing interests, as the plurality unconvincingly attempts to do....