President Bush’s Signing Statements Appended to the McCain and Graham Amendments

Marty Lederman has posted this discussion at Balkinization of what the President Bush’s signing statement to the final defense appropriations bill that includes the Graham (stripping jurisdiction of federal courts to hear habeas challenges brought by alien enemy combatants) and McCain amendments (outlawing use of cruel, inhumane and degrading treatment on detainees by US personnel) will mean and the coming showdown at the Supreme Court in the Hamdan case. He includes the full text of the both amendments. Bottom line: The Bush administration is set to argue that Graham cuts off not just future but pending habeas challenges (e.g., Hamdan) and that McCain does not curtail broad presidential authority to treat detainees in any manner necessary to protect national security. But as Marty points out, the first salvo in this interpretive battle may be fired at Judge Alito during his confirmation hearings later this month.

On a related note, the Fed Courts section of AALS is sponsoring a panel discussion of this very topic and related topics at this week’s AALS annual meeting in Washington DC (thanks to Janet Alexander):

Friday, January 6, from 8:30-10:15 a.m. “Federal Courts and the War on Terrorism”

Barbara Olshansky, Deputy Legal Director, Center for Constitutional Rights, director counsel of the Guantanamo Global Justice Initiative and counsel for petitioners in Rasul v. Bush, on “Clash of the Titans: The Ongoing Battle Between the Executive and the Judiciary in the War on Terror.”

Curtis Bradley, Duke University School of Law and former Counselor on International Law in the Legal Advisor’s Office of the U.S. State
Department, on “Military Commissions and Terrorist Enemy Combatants.”

Neal Katyal, Georgetown University Law Center, lead counsel for petitioner in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld and former National Security Advisor to the Deputy Attorney General, U.S. Department of Justice, on “Hamdan v. Rumsfeld: Why the Guantanamo Military Commissions are Illegal.”

Janet Alexander, Stanford Law School, on “The Graham Amendment: Jurisdiction-Stripping in the War on Terror.”

Check the final AALS schedule for a room number.