Rumsfeld v. Padilla
Encyclopedia
Rumsfeld v. Padilla, , was a United States Supreme Court
Supreme Court of the United States
The Supreme Court of the United States is the highest court in the United States. It has ultimate appellate jurisdiction over all state and federal courts, and original jurisdiction over a small range of cases...

 case, in which José Padilla
José Padilla (alleged terrorist)
José Padilla , also known as Abdullah al-Muhajir or Muhajir Abdullah, is a United States citizen convicted of aiding terrorists....

 sought habeas corpus
Habeas corpus
is a writ, or legal action, through which a prisoner can be released from unlawful detention. The remedy can be sought by the prisoner or by another person coming to his aid. Habeas corpus originated in the English legal system, but it is now available in many nations...

 relief against Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld
Donald Rumsfeld
Donald Henry Rumsfeld is an American politician and businessman. Rumsfeld served as the 13th Secretary of Defense from 1975 to 1977 under President Gerald Ford, and as the 21st Secretary of Defense from 2001 to 2006 under President George W. Bush. He is both the youngest and the oldest person to...

, as a result of his detainment as an "unlawful combatant
Unlawful combatant
An unlawful combatant or unprivileged combatant/belligerent is a civilian who directly engages in armed conflict in violation of the laws of war. An unlawful combatant may be detained or prosecuted under the domestic law of the detaining state for such action.The Geneva Conventions apply in wars...

."

On May 8, 2002, Padilla, a U.S. citizen, flew from Pakistan to Chicago's O'Hare International Airport
O'Hare International Airport
Chicago O'Hare International Airport , also known as O'Hare Airport, O'Hare Field, Chicago Airport, Chicago International Airport, or simply O'Hare, is a major airport located in the northwestern-most corner of Chicago, Illinois, United States, northwest of the Chicago Loop...

. As he stepped off the plane, Padilla was apprehended by federal agents executing a material witness warrant issued by the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York
United States District Court for the Southern District of New York
The United States District Court for the Southern District of New York is a federal district court. Appeals from the Southern District of New York are taken to the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit The United States District Court for the Southern District of New York (in case...

 in connection with its grand jury investigation into the September 11th terrorist attacks. Initially Padilla was considered a "material witness," without charges filed, and given only very limited access to legal counsel. His designation was later changed to "enemy combatant," which, the Bush administration claimed, meant that he, like many non-citizen suspects in the War on Terror
War on Terror
The War on Terror is a term commonly applied to an international military campaign led by the United States and the United Kingdom with the support of other North Atlantic Treaty Organisation as well as non-NATO countries...

, could be imprisoned indefinitely, and without legal recourse
Legal recourse
A legal recourse is an action that can be taken by an individual or a corporation to attempt to remedy a legal difficulty.* A lawsuit if the issue is a matter of civil law* Many contracts require mediation or arbitration before a dispute can go to court...

 or access.

Padilla's attorney, Donna Newman, claiming to act as his next friend
Next friend
In common law, next friend is a phrase used to refer to a person who represents another person who is under disability or otherwise unable to maintain a suit on their own behalf and who does not have a legal guardian....

 and on his behalf, filed a petition for habeas corpus
Habeas corpus
is a writ, or legal action, through which a prisoner can be released from unlawful detention. The remedy can be sought by the prisoner or by another person coming to his aid. Habeas corpus originated in the English legal system, but it is now available in many nations...

 in the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York
United States District Court for the Southern District of New York
The United States District Court for the Southern District of New York is a federal district court. Appeals from the Southern District of New York are taken to the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit The United States District Court for the Southern District of New York (in case...

. On December 4, 2002, the court denied the petition and held that the President of the United States, as Commander-in-Chief
Commander-in-Chief
A commander-in-chief is the commander of a nation's military forces or significant element of those forces. In the latter case, the force element may be defined as those forces within a particular region or those forces which are associated by function. As a practical term it refers to the military...

 had the authority to designate as an "enemy combatant" an American citizen captured on American soil, and, through the Secretary of Defense, to detain him for the duration of armed conflict with al-Qaida.

The case was appealed to the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit
United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit
The United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit is one of the thirteen United States Courts of Appeals...

, which held that the President lacked the authority to order the military detentions of American citizens captured on American soil.

The case was then petitioned to the United States Supreme Court
Supreme Court of the United States
The Supreme Court of the United States is the highest court in the United States. It has ultimate appellate jurisdiction over all state and federal courts, and original jurisdiction over a small range of cases...

. The principal issue before the Court was whether the Congressional Authorization for use of Military Force post September 11 gave to the President
President of the United States
The President of the United States of America is the head of state and head of government of the United States. The president leads the executive branch of the federal government and is the commander-in-chief of the United States Armed Forces....

 the powers to militarily detain a United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 citizen by classifying the detainee as an "enemy combatant." Otherwise, the President would run afoul of the Non-Detention Act
Non-Detention Act
The Non-Detention Act of 1971 was passed to repeal portions of McCarran Internal Security Act of 1950, , specifically Title II, the "Emergency Detention Act". It had allowed for detention of suspected subversives without the normal Constitutional checks required for imprisonment. The Non-Detention...

 which provides that "No citizen shall be imprisoned or otherwise detained by the United States except pursuant to an Act of Congress.

The Court did not decide this issue, however. Instead, the Court held that the habeas corpus petition had been improperly filed. It ruled that because Padilla was being held in a brig (military prison) in South Carolina, the petition should have been filed in the United States District Court for the District of South Carolina
United States District Court for the District of South Carolina
The United States District Court for the District of South Carolina is the federal district court whose jurisdiction is the state of South Carolina...

 and should have named the commander of the brig and not the Secretary of Defense (because the brig commander was Padilla's "immediate custodian"). The Court reversed the decision of the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit
United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit
The United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit is one of the thirteen United States Courts of Appeals...

 and remanded the case for dismissal without prejudice - that is, it overruled the Court of Appeals decision and ordered the dismissal of the case, allowing Padilla to refile the petition. Thus the principal issue of the case had not been resolved.

Paul Clement
Paul Clement
Paul Drew Clement is a former United States Solicitor General and current Georgetown University legal professor. He is also an adjunct professor at New York University School of Law. He was nominated by President George W...

, Principal Deputy Solicitor General at the time, gave oral argument for the United States (Rumsfeld); law professor and human rights lawyer Jennifer Martinez
Jennifer Martínez
Jennifer S. Martinez is a human rights lawyer and a professor of law at Stanford Law School. She represented José Padilla in the Supreme Court in Rumsfeld v. Padilla....

 gave oral argument on behalf of Padilla and Newman.

Political context

The case was argued only two days before the Abu Ghraib prison abuse scandal was first shown to the general public in a The New Yorker
The New Yorker
The New Yorker is an American magazine of reportage, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons and poetry published by Condé Nast...

article by Seymour M. Hersh (April 30), which showed digital photos taken by guards. The story was subsequently taken up by CBS and broadcast on nationwide television.

The timing of the two events is relevant for understanding political context —before the publicizing of incriminating photographs of abused Iraq
Iraq
Iraq ; officially the Republic of Iraq is a country in Western Asia spanning most of the northwestern end of the Zagros mountain range, the eastern part of the Syrian Desert and the northern part of the Arabian Desert....

i detainees, the United States was largely dominated by a political climate wherein the charge of abuse was only anecdotal —it was weighed lightly as compared to appeals for national security
National security
National security is the requirement to maintain the survival of the state through the use of economic, diplomacy, power projection and political power. The concept developed mostly in the United States of America after World War II...

. Still, the rendered decision came after news of the scandal broke, and the degree to which the Abu Ghraib case had influence is speculative.

During the oral argument, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg
Ruth Bader Ginsburg
Ruth Joan Bader Ginsburg is an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States. Ginsburg was appointed by President Bill Clinton and took the oath of office on August 10, 1993. She is the second female justice and the first Jewish female justice.She is generally viewed as belonging to...

 asked some pointed questions of Clement — some of which directly treated the issue of abuse. An important dialogue features a comment by Deputy Solicitor General Paul Clement
Paul Clement
Paul Drew Clement is a former United States Solicitor General and current Georgetown University legal professor. He is also an adjunct professor at New York University School of Law. He was nominated by President George W...

 which denies the claim that the United States uses torture
Torture
Torture is the act of inflicting severe pain as a means of punishment, revenge, forcing information or a confession, or simply as an act of cruelty. Throughout history, torture has often been used as a method of political re-education, interrogation, punishment, and coercion...

:

Justice Ginsburg: Suppose the executive says mild torture, we think, will help get this information. It's not a soldier who does something against the Code of Military Justice, but it's an executive command. Some systems do that to get information.
Clement: Well, our executive doesn't. And I think, I mean...
Justice Ginsburg: What's constraining? That's the point. Is it just up to the good will of the executive, or is there any judicial check?

Despite damning evidence that the Solicitor General's office was less than truthful with the Supreme Court about the Bush administration's torture policies and neglect of international treaties, more in-depth research shows that while some attorneys in the Bush administration like John Yoo
John Yoo
John Choon Yoo is an American attorney, law professor, and author. As a former official in the United States Department of Justice during the George W...

 and John Ashcroft
John Ashcroft
John David Ashcroft is a United States politician who served as the 79th United States Attorney General, from 2001 until 2005, appointed by President George W. Bush. Ashcroft previously served as the 50th Governor of Missouri and a U.S...

 knew about the torture taking place at Abu Ghraib
Abu Ghraib
The city of Abu Ghraib in the Baghdad Governorate of Iraq is located just west of Baghdad's city center, or northwest of Baghdad International Airport. It has a population of 189,000. The old road to Jordan passes through Abu Ghraib...

, the U.S. Office of the Solicitor General, of which Paul Clement
Paul Clement
Paul Drew Clement is a former United States Solicitor General and current Georgetown University legal professor. He is also an adjunct professor at New York University School of Law. He was nominated by President George W...

 was a part, knew very little about the Bush administration's tactics for prisoner interrogation, and knew nothing about the atrocities of Abu Ghraib
Abu Ghraib
The city of Abu Ghraib in the Baghdad Governorate of Iraq is located just west of Baghdad's city center, or northwest of Baghdad International Airport. It has a population of 189,000. The old road to Jordan passes through Abu Ghraib...

.

Supreme Court Cases

  • Ex Parte Milligan
    Ex parte Milligan
    Ex parte Milligan, , was a United States Supreme Court case that ruled that the application of military tribunals to citizens when civilian courts are still operating is unconstitutional. It was also controversial because it was one of the first cases after the end of the American Civil...

  • Ex Parte Quirin
    Ex parte Quirin
    Ex parte Quirin, , is a Supreme Court of the United States case that upheld the jurisdiction of a United States military tribunal over the trial of several Operation Pastorius German saboteurs in the United States...

  • Johnson v. Eisentrager
    Johnson v. Eisentrager
    Johnson v. Eisentrager, 339 U.S. 763 , was a major decision of the U.S. Supreme Court, where it decided that U.S. courts had no jurisdiction over German war criminals held in a U.S.-administered German prison...

  • Hamdi v. Rumsfeld
    Hamdi v. Rumsfeld
    Hamdi v. Rumsfeld, 542 U.S. 507 was a U.S. Supreme Court decision reversing the dismissal of a habeas corpus petition brought on behalf of Yaser Esam Hamdi, a U.S. citizen being detained indefinitely as an "illegal enemy combatant." The Court recognized the power of the government to detain enemy...

  • Rasul v. Bush
    Rasul v. Bush
    Rasul v. Bush, 542 U.S. 466 , is a landmark United States Supreme Court decision establishing that the U.S. court system has the authority to decide whether foreign nationals held in Guantanamo Bay were wrongfully imprisoned...


See also


External links

  • Rumsfeld v. Padilla, U.S. Supreme Court Decision
  • Abstract (OYEZ
    Oyez.org
    The Oyez Project at the Chicago-Kent College of Law is an unofficial online multimedia archive of the Supreme Court of the United States, especially audio of oral arguments...

    )
  • Oral argument in Realmedia format (OYEZ)
  • Tatler blog entry noting the issue's connection to Abu Ghraib
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