Hamdi v. Rumsfeld (2004)

Facts

Yaser Emam Hamdi was born in Louisiana in 1980.  He moved to Saudi Arabia with his family as a child.  By 2001, he was living in Afghanistan, and was captured by the Northern Alliance and turned him over to the U.S. military.  The government transferred him to the U.S. Naval Base at Guantanamo Bay in January 2002.  Upon discovering that Hamdi is an American citizen, the government then transferred him to a naval brig in Norfolk, Virginia where he remained until a later transfer to South Carolina.

In June 2002, Hamdi’s father Esam Fouad Hamdi filed a next friend petition for a writ of habeas corpus.  He had not had contact with his son since the Government detained him in 2001, and stated in his original complaint that the Government had not allowed his son access to legal counsel or notice of any charges pending against him.  In addition, he asserted that his son went to Afghanistan to do relief work in July 2001.  He was traveling alone in the region, and after the United States attacked he was unable to leave the country.

Procedural Background

The United States District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia found that Hamdi’s father was a proper next friend, meaning that Hamdi's father could represent Hamdi in a suit challenging his detention.  Finding Hamdi's father as a proper next friend allowed the District Court to appoint a federal public defender to the case and order access to Hamdi.  The Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals reversed and held that the District Court failed to extend appropriate deference to the government’s security and intelligence interests.

On remand, the U.S. government filed a response and a motion to dismiss, attaching a declaration by Michael Mobbs, identified as a Special Advisor to the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy.  The Mobbs Declaration was the sole evidentiary support used by the government to support detaining Hamdi; it essentially stated that Hamdi was an enemy combatant for associating with the Taliban.  As a result, the Fourth Circuit directed the District Court to consider the sufficiency of the Mobbs Declaration as an independent matter before proceeding further.

The District Court found that the Mobbs Declaration fell far short of supporting Hamdi’s detention, calling it "little more than the government’s say-so."  The court then demanded that the government release numerous materials for in camera review, including:

• copies of all of Hamdi’s statements and notes taken from interviews with him that related to his reasons for going to Afghanistan and his activities there;
• a list of all interrogators who had questioned him and their name and addresses;
• statements by members of the Northern Alliance regarding Hamdi’s surrender and capture and subsequent detentions;
• and the names and titles of the U.S. government officials who determined that Hamdi was an enemy combatant and that he should be moved to a naval brig.

The government appealed the production order and again the Fourth Circuit reversed the District Court.  The Appeals Court reasoned that “[b]ecause it was undisputed that Hamdi was captured in a zone of active combat in a foreign theater of conflict, no factual inquiry or evidentiary hearing allowing Hamdi to be heard or to rebut the Government’s assertions was necessary or proper,” and ordered the habeas petition dismissed. [Citation Needed for Quote]

The Supreme Court granted certiorari.

Holdings

Detention of individuals who fought against the United States in Afghanistan for the duration of the particular conflict in which they were captured, is so fundamental and accepted an incident to war as to be an exercise of the necessary and appropriate force Congress has authorized the President to use. [cite needed]

Due process requires that a United States citizen being held as an enemy combatant must be given meaningful opportunity to contest the factual basis for his detention. [cite needed]

Case Summary

There was no majority opinion in this case, and the four separate opinions totaled nearly 100 pages.  All the justices agreed that a federal court exercising habeas corpus jurisdiction was authorized to inquire into the legality of Hamdi’s detention by the executive, and all but Justice Thomas agreed that the government could not lawfully detain Hamdi merely on the basis of the Mobbs Declaration.

In the plurality opinion that controlled the disposition of the case, Justice O’Connor was joined by Chief Justice Rehnquist, Justice Kennedy and Justice Breyer.  They found that the executive could lawfully detain enemy combatants, but that American citizens were entitled to an opportunity before a neutral decision maker to challenge the Executive’s facts. 

Justice Scalia dissented with Justice Stevens (an unusual pairing) and concluded that Hamdi’s detention was unconstitutional and that thus Hamdi should be released from military detention.  Justice Souter and Justice Ginsburg dissented as well, arguing that Hamdi’s detention was unlawful because it was in violation of a federal statute.  Justice Thomas dissented on the ground that Hamdi’s detention was lawful and that the judgment of the Fourth Circuit should be affirmed.

Where is Yaser Hamdi now?

On September 23, 2004, only a few months after the Supreme Court’s decision came down, the United States Justice Department released Hamdi to Saudi Arabia on the condition that he give up his U.S. citizenship.Hamdi was also forced to agree to various travel restrictions to several countries such as the United States, Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Pakistan and Palestine, all nations where the U.S. is involved in hostilities.  Finally, he had to agree to not sue the U.S. government for his captivity.  “Trials of Identity: Jose Padilla and the War on Terror” by Michael Vicente Perez, page 6.  [We need to get this from the author]

Student Comment

Justice Scalia’s decision takes the broadest view of the Constitution’s protections of Hamdi.  Because Hamdi was an American citizen, Scalia felt that he should be treated differently than non-citizens captured abroad in the prosecution of the War on Terror.  “The very core of liberty secured by our Anglo-Saxon system of separated powers has been freedom from indefinite imprisonment at the will of the Executive.”  He argued that due process is the right that protects this liberty, and habeas corpus is the instrument that safeguards the right. Notably, Scalia voted against all the other major Guantanamo detainees. [citations?]

Thus, Hamdi's Americanness was key to Scalia's decision that Hamdi has the right to habeas corpus.  In this sense, his American status mitigates his racialized foreignness, despite his purported involvement in foreign hostilities.  Moreover, his citizenship nullifies his terrorist status, thus constructing citizenship and terrorism as a binary.  [more?]

After an extensive historical analysis of habeas corpus, he concluded by criticizing the plurality opinion, which found that the Authorization for the Use of Military Force authorized detention of enemy combatants and then set forth procedures for the Court’s to follow in testing Hamdi’s claim. Scalia argued that the plurality’s development of new procedures disregarded both the Constitution and common law.“ The role of habeas corpus is to determine the legality of executive detention....It is not the habeas court's function to make illegal detention legal by supplying a process that the Government could have provided, but chose not to.