JURIST - Paper Chase: Supreme Court declines to hear Guantanamo detainee habeas appeals

[JURIST] A divided US Supreme Court [official website; JURIST news archive] Monday denied petitions for certiorari [PDF text] in two cases brought by Guantanamo Bay detainees seeking habeas corpus review of their detentions. The petitions for certiorari came in the cases of Boumedienne v. Bush and al Odah v. United States, where the US Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit in February upheld [PDF text; JURIST report] the habeas-stripping provision of the controversial Military Commissions Act [PDF text; JURIST news archive] as applied to "enemy combatants."

Four members of the Court must agree to accept a case, but only three - Justices Stephen Breyer, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and David Souter - voted to grant certiorari and dissented [PDF text] from the Court's decision not to hear the appeal. Justices Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito, as well as Chief Justice John Roberts, voted to reject the appeals. Justices Anthony Kennedy and John Paul Stevens filed a separate statement [PDF text] in which they explained they were rejecting the appeals merely on procedural grounds. AP has more. SCOTUSblog has additional coverage. Bloomberg has more.

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