Columbia Law Experts Can Speak on Gitmo Supreme Court Case
Columbia Law Experts Can Speak on Gitmo Supreme Court Case
Press contact: Erin St. John Kelly office 212-854-2650 cell 646-284-8549
December 3, 2007 (NEW YORK) –Columbia Law School experts are available to discuss the Supreme Court cases in which detainees at Guantanamo Bay question the legality of their confinement. The Supreme Court is scheduled to hear oral arguments Wed., Dec. 5 in Boumediene v. Bush and Al Odah v. United States.
- Columbia Law School expert Matthew Waxman served in a Pentagon post created in the wake of the Abu Ghraib crisis to address prisoner abuse. In the Bush Administration, Waxman pushed for new Pentagon standards on handling terror suspects to include language from the Geneva Conventions that bars cruel and degrading treatment.
``We should move beyond the debate between those who say that only traditional habeas corpus rights to a fair hearing can sort out these cases and those who say that noncitizen enemy fighters captured abroad in wartime have never been entitled to their day in court,’’ Waxman wrote in a recent op-ed. He called for ``a broad agreement about the minimum acceptable conditions for any long-term detention process.’’
Matthew Waxman, Associate Professor of Law, can be reached by contacting Columbia Law School Public Affairs at 212-854-2650 or [email protected]. To read Waxman’s Washington Post op-ed on Gitmo, click here.
- Columbia Law School expert Sarah Cleveland was co-author of the ``Brief of Professors of Constitutional Law and Federal Jurisdiction,’’ in support of the petitioners, which argues that constitutional habeas corpus applies to Guantanamo.
``The Supreme Court should hold that constitutional habeas corpus applies to Guantanamo, and that the Military Commissions Act of 2006 is therefore unconstitutional in seeking to strip the federal courts of jurisdiction over foreign nationals designated as enemy aliens,’’ said Cleveland. ``The critical question will be what, if anything, the Supreme Court signals about the underlying merits of the detainees' claims and the application (or nonapplication) of constitutional habeas to detainees in Afghanistan, Iraq and other foreign locations beyond Guantanamo.’’
Sarah Cleveland, Columbia Law School’s Louis Henkin Professor of Human and Constitutional Rights and Co-Director of the Law School’s Human Rights Institute, can be reached at 212-854-2651 or [email protected].
- Columbia Law School expert Lori Damrosch,, specializes in public international law and the U.S. law of foreign relations. She has served since 2003 as editor of the “American Journal of International Law.”
Lori Damrosch, the Henry L. Moses Professor of International Law and Organization, can be reached at 212-854-3740 or [email protected].
- Columbia Law School expert Michael Dorf has clerked on the Supreme Court and specializes in civil procedure, comparative constitutions, federal courts and pragmatism.
Michael Dorf, Isidor and Seville Sulzbacher Professor of Law, can be reached at 212-854-2672 or [email protected].
- Columbia Law School expert Scott Horton is a New York attorney known for his work in emerging markets and international law, especially human rights law and the law of armed conflict .He served as counsel to Andrei Sakharov and Elena Bonner, among other activists in the former Soviet Union. Horton recently led a number of studies of abuse issues associated with the conduct of the war on terror for the New York City Bar Association
Scott Horton, Columbia Law School Lecturer-in-Law, can be reached at 917 216 2319.
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Reporters can also schedule live and taped TV interviews in the Law School’s fiber optic transmission studio. Contact [email protected].
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