The Supreme Court dismissed the suit brought in al-Marri v. Spagone during conference this morning. The order is here. Al-Marri argued that he was being held unlawfully because he had not been formally charged with any crimes during his almost 6-year long detention. That changed last week when the Obama administration filed formal charges against [...]

The Supreme Court will discuss whether or not to continue the case of al-Marri during conference on Friday, March 6, according to the Supreme Court’s docket sheet. Among other things, Al-Marri charges that his detention without formal charges represents an unconstitutional breach of habeus corpus. Last week, the Obama administration formally charged Al-Marri and motioned [...]

The Supreme Court released five opinions today, the most interesting of which is the decision in Boumediene v. Bush, the landmark detainee right’s case. The Court held, 5-4, that detainees currently designated as ‘enemy combatants’ have signficant habeus corpus rights and have the right to have them upheld in federal district court. I’m reading this [...]

The next few weeks are sure to be busy ones on the Court. The Court has an astonishing 26 cases left on its docket and all of those will receive an opinion before the end of June. Last year the Court released 22 cases in the same period (second through fourth weeks in June.) The [...]

Oral Arguments took place this morning in Boumediene v. Bush and its sister case, Al-Odah v. US. Because of the heightened interest in the case, the Supreme Court opted to expedite the delivery of the audio recording and it was broadcast on C-Span by 11:50EST, less than an hour after the arguments concluded. The arguments [...]

The Petitioner’s Briefs have been submitted in Al-Odah v. US and Boumediene v. Bush, the two high-profile detainee cases that the court has accepted for review. Thanks to SCOTUSblog, everyone can access the Al-Odah briefs here (Al-Odah) and here (El-Banna) and the Boumediene brief here. I’ll use Al-Odah for the majority of my analysis but [...]

You can find the 2006 Term Index here. You can find the 2008 Term Index here. Cases Completed: (72) Medellin v. Texas Docket Filing Case Number: 06-984 On Appeal From: USCA-DC Date Argued: – Date Decided: August 5, 2008 Per Curiam Dissent: Stevens(d), Souter(d), Ginsburg(d), Breyer(d) Days between argument and opinion: – (72) Davis v. [...]