Rasul v. Bush

Date: June 28, 2004

Citation: 542 US ‗‗‗ 2004

Issue: Fifth Amendment

Significance: In a 6–3 decision the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that federal courts have jurisdiction over habeas corpus cases brought by suspected terrorists held in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. The Bush administration had claimed the detainees were "unlawful combatants," subject to military tribunals.

Background

Starting in January 2002, four foreign prisoners—two British (or as some records show, one British and one Kuwaiti) and two Australian citizens—were received in Guantanamo Bay Detention Camp after being turned over to U.S. authorities; they had been captured in Afghanistan and Pakistan. The detention camp is located at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, on a U.S. naval base. The camp, which was situated on land that has been leased by the United States since about 1900, was being used to hold suspected terrorists after the 9/11 attacks on the United States. Most of the prisoners who were being sent to the detention center were Muslim and also captured in Afghanistan or Iraq. They, too, had been suspected terrorists but no crime had been charged against them by the United States.

The prisoners, including Shafiq Rasul, Asif Iqbal, and Mamdouh Habib, were believed to have engaged in terrorist activities. However, as they were not charged with a crime, they did not receive a trial and were not provided with legal counsel. The three prisoners filed suit (via relatives) through the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) in a U.S. district court in February 2002. They argued that the U.S. government had violated their legal rights as proscribed in the Geneva Conventions, a set of international treaties on humanitarian treatment of civilians and prisoners of war in wartime. The 1949 Geneva Convention introduced the idea of protecting civilians, especially after the atrocities committed against civilians during World War II, as earlier conventions only protected soldiers. This convention and its additional protocols were approved in 1977.

The prisoners claimed that they had not been active in or had planned any military or terrorist actions against the United States. The prisoners contended that they were being held in violation of the due process clause of the Fifth Amendment. In May 2002, CCR filed on behalf of twelve Kuwaiti citizens a similar complaint on May 1, 2002, in Al Odah v. Bush. Both Rasul v. Bush and Odah v. Bush also filed habeas corpus, challenging that the prisoners’ detentions were unlawful.

Both Rasul v. Bush and Odah v. Bush were dismissed in the lower courts. The courts cited lack of subject matter jurisdiction and said that habeas corpus petitions were not available to non-U.S. citizens who were detained outside of U.S. jurisdictions. The U.S. District Court cited Johnson v. Eisentrager (1950), which stated that foreign nationals imprisoned abroad could not file habeas corpus in U.S. courts because these jurisdictions are outside of the United States. In early April, the CCR filed a habeas corpus petition with the Supreme Court. On April 20, the Supreme Court began to hear arguments in the case.

Opinion of the Court

In a 6–3 decision, the Supreme Court ruled that suspected terrorists had the right to challenge their detention and overruled the decisions made by the lower courts. Justice John Paul Stevens delivered the majority opinion of the Court. He asserted that a federal district court had the authority to enforce jurisdiction over detainees that challenged their detainment under habeas corpus.

Justice Anthony Kennedy concurred, followed by Sandra Day O’Connor, David Souter, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and Stephen Breyer. Justice Antonin Scalia led the dissenting opinion in saying that the Court’s decision strayed from the precedent set by Eisentrager and "sprung" a trap on the executive branch. Chief Justice William Rehnquist and Clarence Thomas joined the dissent.

Stevens detailed the majority decision in saying that the right to habeas corpus is in force in "all dominions under the sovereign’s control" and with respect to the Eisentrager ruling, he said:

• Petitioners in these cases differ from the Eisentrager detainees in important respects: They are not nationals of countries at war with the United States, and they deny that they have engaged in or plotted acts of aggression against this country; they have never been afforded access to any tribunal, much less charged with and convicted of wrong-doing; and for more than two years they have been imprisoned in territory over with the United States exercises exclusive jurisdiction and control. (Garrison 323)

Impact

The ruling in Rasul v. Bush was the first response by the Supreme Court to check executive authority since 9/11 and the war on terrorism that followed. As a result of the ruling, the George W. Bush administration was forced to revise its policy on Guantanamo Bay detainees to include due process. The Rasul v. Bush decision also brought to light the lawlessness that detainees had been facing at Guantanamo Bay.

The Court’s decision in Rasul v. Bush led to the creation of a Combatant Status Review Tribunal (CSRT) in July 2004 to review charges related to detainees, which had previously been handled by U.S. courts. It also established the Detainee Treatment Act in December 2005, which transferred jurisdiction over detainees at Guantanamo Bay to the CSRT.

Rasul v. Bush set a precedent for cases that followed, including Boumediene v. Bush and Al-Odah v. United States in 2008. The Court’s decision in these cases upheld the Rasul v. Bush decision: the majority opinion ruled that aliens who were determined to be enemy combatants have the right to habeas corpus.

Bibliography

Christol, Carl Q. The American Challenge: Terrorists, Detainees, Treaties, and Torture—Responses to the Rule of Law, 2001–2008. Lanham: UP of America, 2009. Print.

Garrison, Arthur H. Supreme Court Jurisprudence in Times of National Crisis, Terrorism, and War. Lanham: Lexington, 2103. Print.

Henning, Anna C. The Jurisprudence of Justice John Paul Stevens: Leading Opinions on Wartime Detentions. Washington: Congressional Research Service, 2010. Electronic.

"Rasul v. Bush." Legal Information Institute. Cornell University Law School, n.d. Web. 19 Jan. 2016. <https://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/03-334.ZS.html>.

Ralph, Jason. America’s War on Terror: The State of the 9/11 Exception from Bush to Obama. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2013. Print.

"Rasul v. Bush." Supreme Court of the United States. Supreme Court of the U.S., 2004. Web. 19 Jan. 2016. <http://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/03pdf/03-334.pdf>.

"Rasul v. Bush." Center for Constitutional Rights. Center for Constitutional Rights, n.d. Web. 19 Jan. 2016. <https://ccrjustice.org/home/what-we-do/our-cases/rasul-v-bush>.

"Rasul v. Bush & Al-Odah v. U.S.: The Right to Habeas Corpus: Defending Due Process for Guantanamo Detainees." The Center for Justice & Accountability. The Center for Justice & Accountability, n.d. Web. 19 Jan. 2016. <http://www.cja.org/article.php?id=321>.