Posted by Paul Cassell:
Should President Obama Create a Domestic Terror Court?
http://volokh.com/archives/archive_2009_05_17-2009_05_23.shtml#1242400011
My colleague Amos Guiora argues "yes" in [1]this interesting article.
Here is the nub of the argument:
President Barack Obama has stated that among his initial priorities
as commander-in-chief is closing the United States detention
facility in Guantanamo Bay. One of his first actions after taking
office was to suspend all legal proceedings in Guantanamo so that
�the newly inaugurated president and his administration [can]
review the military commission�s process, generally, and the cases
currently pending before military commissions, specifically.� To
that end, on January 22, 2009, President Obama signed an executive
order requiring the closure of the Guantanamo Bay detention
facility within one year. This Order raises numerous, highly
problematic questions including: What do we do with the current
detainees? Where will they go? How will they be tried? Will they be
tried? What shall be done with future terrorism suspects?Although
President Obama has made his intentions clear, he has not, as of
yet - according to media reports - determined what is the most
effective manner to go forth with this enormously complex issue.
Therefore, now is clearly the time to develop a working strategy to
resolve the fundamental questions of where and how thousands of
post-9/11 detainees are tried. For the reasons articulated below, I
recommend establishing a domestic terror court (DTC) in the United
States.
This article will detail the specific processes and procedures of
such a court and seek to answer many of these difficult questions.
In doing so, it is my hope that this article will act as a �guide�
for policy makers in articulating, developing, and implementing a
process from detention to trial of individuals suspected of
involvement in terrorism. A lawful civilian process, subject to
independent judicial review, is the constitutional, intellectual,
and philosophical underpinning of this proposal. In detailing the
nuts and bolts of the proposed DTC. Though I will briefly address
why the DTC proposal should be adopted, the primary emphasis in
this article is to fill in the blanks as to the workings of the
court.
This seems like a lot more sensible approach than many other proposals
I have seen.
References
1. http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1401982
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