Reviewing a ruling that the federal courts are not entitled to hear a claim that detainees at Guantánamo Bay in Cuba are being held in violation of the Constitution and international law. DECIDED
The ACLU is part of a broad-based coalition that filed a friend-of-the-court
brief calling on the Supreme Court to assure that the detainees being held at
Guantánamo have access to the courts to challenge the legality of their
detention. A federal appeals court in Washington, D.C. had ruled that the
Guantánamo camps were part of the "sovereign territory of Cuba" and thus outside
the jurisdiction of U.S. laws.
The brief supports an appeal in two
related lawsuits filed last year by relatives of 16 Guantánamo detainees who
argued that their continued detention without any legal process violates the
government’s constitutional and treaty obligations. The signers of the brief
take no position as to what process is due the prisoners, but argue that the Due
Process Clause and the Geneva Conventions require the nation’s courts to ensure
some kind of process.
|
