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Past Event

Judicial Issues Forum | No. 24

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A Governance Studies Event

Guantanamo Detainees: Is a National Security Court the Answer?

Legal Architecture for the War on Terror, Guantánamo, Terrorism, Courts, National Security


Event Summary

President Obama’s decision to close the Guantanamo Bay prison camp has left many thorny questions for his administration to resolve.

How many of the 250 detainees—captured by U.S. forces in Afghanistan and elsewhere—can be safely released? How many of the others can be criminally prosecuted? Are human rights groups right to demand the release of those who cannot be prosecuted, no matter how dangerous? Or should Obama continue the Bush policy of detaining as “enemy combatants” those who seem dangerous? If so, should Obama leave the final word on who is an enemy combatant to the federal judges who are reviewing detainees’ cases under a Supreme Court decision that left critical procedural issues unresolved? Or should he ask Congress to adopt new rules and to create a new national security court to administer them?

Multimedia Downloads

Event Audio

March 17, 2009 Length: 89:44

Judicial Issues Forum

Event Information

When

Tuesday, March 17, 2009
10:00 AM to 11:30 AM

Where

Saul/Zilkha Rooms
The Brookings Institution
1775 Massachusetts Ave., NW
Washington, DC
Map

Event Materials


Contact: Brookings Office of Communications

E-mail: events@brookings.edu

Phone: 202.797.6105

On March 17, the Brookings Institution hosted a Judicial Issues Forum in partnership with the Progressive Policy Institute to examine these questions. National Journal columnist and Brookings Nonresident Senior Fellow Stuart Taylor moderated a discussion with Harvard Law School’s Jack Goldsmith, National War College’s Harvey Rishikof, American University Washington College of Law’s Stephen I. Vladeck, and Patricia M. Wald, former Chief Judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia and former judge of the International Criminal Court for the former Yugoslavia.

The Judicial Issues Forum is a series of public discussions at Brookings on jurisprudence and the role of the courts. The Forum hosts regular events to address the major legal and juridical debates and events of the day and weigh their implications.

At the end of the program, the panelists took audience questions.

Transcript

STUART TAYLOR:  President Obama and his national security team are wrestling with the question of what do we do with the 240-some detainees on Guantanamo who we inherited from the Bush administration, not to mention their counterparts in Afghanistan.

And there are by some calculations at least three groups at Guantanamo, 80-some at the most, maybe a handful, who could be prosecuted under ordinary criminal law standards either in military courts or in federal courts; 60-some by the administration -- the previous administration's calculations who are not so dangerous and could be released. But that would leave more than 100, perhaps many more than 100 who are deemed at least by the military, at least under the prior administration to be non-prosecutable because of various problems with evidence and standards of proof, and maybe they haven't even committed any crime, but too dangerous to release. And the hard question is, what do you do with that group, assuming they exist?

Participants

Moderator

Stuart Taylor, Jr.

Nonresident Senior Fellow, Governance Studies

Featured Panelists

Jack Goldsmith

Henry L. Shattuck Professor of Law
Harvard Law School

Stephen I. Vladeck

Associate Professor of Law
American University Washington College of Law

Harvey Rishikof

Professor of Law and National Security Studies
National War College

Patricia M. Wald

Former Chief Judge
United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia


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