Rasul v. Bush

Rasul v. Bush, 542 U.S. 466 (2004), was a landmark decision of the United States Supreme Court in which the Court held that foreign nationals held in the Guantanamo Bay detention camp could petition federal courts for writs of habeas corpus to review the legality of their detention. The Court's 6–3 judgment on June 28, 2004, reversed a D.C. Circuit decision which had held that the judiciary has no jurisdiction to hear any petitions from foreign nationals held in Guantanamo Bay. The lead petitioner, British citizen Shafiq Rasul, was one of the Tipton Three. The U.S. transported the three men to the United Kingdom in March 2004 before the decision was handed down, and the government released them the next day. On September 14, 2001, Congress passed the Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Terrorists, giving the President of the United States broad powers to prosecute a Global War on Terror in response to the September 11 attacks. Secretary of State Colin Powell and State Department Legal Advisor William Howard Taft IV advised that the President must observe the Geneva Conventions. Colonel Lawrence Morris proposed holding public hearings modeled on the Nuremberg trials. Major General Thomas Romig, the Judge Advocate General of the United States Army, recommended any new military tribunals be modeled on existing courts-martial. However, Assistant Attorney General for the Office of Legal Counsel Jay Bybee, relying on the unitary executive theory developed by Deputy Assistant Attorney General John Yoo, advised the President in a series of memos that he could hold enemy combatants abroad, indefinitely, without Congressional oversight, and free from judicial review. On November 13, 2001, President George W. Bush signed a military order titled the Detention, Treatment, and Trial of Certain Non-Citizens in the War Against Terrorism, which sought to detain and try enemy combatants by military commissions under Presidential authority alone.