Federal Judiciary

Judges to meet on detainee plans

By Akin Gump Supreme Court Practice Group

The judges on the U.S. District Court in Washington who will soon begin carrying out the Supreme Court’s ruling on the legal rights of Guantanamo Bay detainees will meet next Tuesday to start making plans, Chief Judge Royce C. Lamberth said on Wednesday.  After a second meeting on Wednesday morning with lawyers for the detainees and for the Justice Department, discussing possible coordination of issues in scores of habeas cases, the Court released this press release.  Judge Lamberth called the meeting with counsel “a constructive step.”

Meanwhile, attorneys for detainees, in another move to get lower court proceedings going, asked Chief Justice John G. Roberts, Jr., to put into effect immediately the Court’s order on Monday returning the case of Gates v. Bismullah (07-1054) to D.C. Circuit Court.  In the Bismullah case, the Circuit Court had laid down rules on the information the Pentagon must supply to that Court as it reviews military decisions to hold prisoners at Guantanamo as “enemy combatants.”  The Supreme Court told the Circuit Court to reconsider that ruling in the wake of the Justices’ detainee rights ruling, Boumediene v. Bush (06-1195, decided June 12).

Rather than waiting more than three weeks to issue the judgment in Bismullah, detainees’ counsel suggested, the Chief Justice should issue it right away so that the Circuit Court can decide how to proceed with its congressionally-assigned duties to review combatant designations.  It is unclear what the Circuit Court can do on those proceedings, since most detainees will be seeking first to get legal relief in habeas petitions in U.S. District Court.

UPDATE 5:45 p.m.  Chief Justice Roberts on Wednesday afternoon granted the request to issue immediately the judgment in Bismullah, returning the case to the Circuit Court.

Full post as published by SCOTUSBLOG on June 25, 2008 (boomark / email).