A brief attempt to frame the questions for Ben and others on the issue of preventive detention:

I think Deborah is absolutely right to insist upon distinguishing the GTMO problem from everything else. Most of the GTMO detainees have been incarcerated for more than six years. Finally, they are receiving a serious opportunity to contest their detentions in the D.C. habeas proceedings, and we should allow those proceedings to run their course before offering any statutory fixes. The GTMO regime was designed primarily for interrogation purposes, rather than for the sort of incapacitation that is the focus of Ben’s book. That explains the fairly indiscriminate collection of prisoners, based on sketchy evidence, and the manner in which the detainees have been treated there. (Imagine how different GTMO, or an equivalent U.S.-based facility, would look if incapacitation were the principal aim — it’d probably resemble the U.S.’s historical POW facilities, housing (primarily) detainees about whom we have more certainty of dangerousness, and in humane conditions.) If Ben’s book and the Parhat example are any indication, in many of the GTMO cases the government probably will not be able to demonstrate that the detainees are among those whose detention Congress has authorized — particularly if the habeas courts begin to use a detention standard similar to that articulated by Judge Wilkonson last week in al-Marri. And, as I argued a few days after Boumediene was decided, the habeas proceedings will provide almost all of the procedural fixes that Ben proposes.

Accordingly, any statute to be considered in 2009 (and Ben agrees that Congress and the new President should wait until then) should be focused not so much on the GTMO detainees, but instead on (i) the thousands of detainees we are holding elsewhere, such as at Bagram; and (ii) future detainees….

Before we move on to the specific questions of detention and interrogation, I’m curious about Ben’s, and others’, reactions to one other fundamental question. Orin Kerr, over at the Volokh Conspiracy, mentioned to me offline that perhaps some of our differences in this symposium are premised on our “very different assessments of the terrorist threat.” I responded that I was skeptical of this — that I assumed there was not much distance between most of us, Ben included, on the nature of the threats (plural explained below), but only on how we think Congress, the courts, the Constitution and international law should respond to such threats.

For what it’s worth, my starting assumption has been that it is important to identify and distinguish two distinct sorts of threats. First, although there is a very interesting and important debate/discussion now underway as to whether and how al Qaeda is gaining or losing strength, I assume that al Qaeda is and will for the foreseeable future remain a chronic but intermittent threat with respect to what I will reluctantly call “familiar” terrorist acts — terrible acts of violence, but roughly within the range of what the West has been confronting for the past two or three decades: incidents such as the African embassy bombings and the London and Madrid bombings, as well as intermittent suicide bombs in subways, malls, etc. Some of those terrorist acts will occur in the U.S., more overseas. Perhaps, on occasion, something more dramatic, akin to the 9/11 attacks…

As I was saying, it is a central theme of Law and the Long War that “we do not have a lot of law here” (p.11).

Boy, that sure would be news to David Addington! If we don’t have a lot of law here, then why is it that the Bush Administration has spent the past seven years writing memo after memo arguing that it may disregard, or disingenuously construe, a whole slew of laws that constrain the President in his campaign against al Qaeda? And why has Addington crafted countless signing statements indicating that the President will circumvent Congress’s more recent handiwork?

Perhaps the more pertinent question is: “not a lot of law” compared to . . . what, exactly? Is there any previous war or armed conflict in which the Commander in Chief has been met with remotely as much law governing a military campaign? (David Barron and I argue, for what it’s worth (see pages 712-715), that a major reason why this conflict involves so much more law regulating the Commander in Chief than past conflicts is that this military “campaign” centrally involves detention and intelligence-gathering — subjects that Congress has commonly regulated — and that these activities are occurring not only on traditional battlefields overseas, but in civilian settings here at home, and affecting U.S. persons, such that the legislature has a greater interest in putting brakes on the executive.)

Let’s see…

Thanks so much to the Opinio Juris folks for the opportunity to participate in this wonderful symposium. Ben’s book truly is indispensable — a must-read for all those interested in these important topics. In particular, Ben’s descriptions of the difficult questions, and his narrative of how we got to this unfortunate point with respect to many of them, are thorough, precise, and (most importantly) lucid — which is saying quite a lot when it comes to these debates. I am almost inclined to say that if I had to recommend a single volume to someone to inform them of where we’ve been and where we’re going in the conflict with al Qaeda, it would be this one.

Almost…

In the beginning of his concurrence in Medellin, Justice Stevens reads Article 94 not to require the Texas state courts to take steps to ensure that the U.S. complys with the ICJ judgment. I disagree with his interpretation of “undertakes to comply,” but he’s almost convinced me that it’s a close question, at least with respect to whether the treaty (plus the Supremacy Clause) imposes an obligation on the state court to entertain a habeas petition that state law would otherwise foreclose.

In any event, and more to the point, Justice Stevens then includes (page 4-5) a remarkable paragraph that in my view gets right to the heart of the matter, which is not whether the ICJ judgment is “enforceable in court,” but instead whether the State of Texas as a whole has a constitutional obligation to see to it that the ICJ judgment is honored:

Under the express terms of the Supremacy Clause, the United States’ obligation to “undertak[e] to comply” with the ICJ’s decision falls on each of the States as well as the Federal Government. One consequence of our form of government is that sometimes States must shoulder the primary responsibility for protecting the honor and integrity of the Nation. Texas’ duty in this respect is all the greater since it was Texas that—by failing to provide consular notice in accordance with the Vienna Convention—ensnared the United States in the current controversy. Having already put the Nation in breach of one treaty, it is now up to Texas to prevent the breach of another.

OK, so Texas (as well as the federal government) has a constitutional obligation to prevent the U.S. from breaching Article 94. I agree. And if Texas were to execute one of the 51 defendants before they were afforded “review and reconsideration” of their sentences by someone, Texas would then cause the U.S. to breach Article 94, which Texas may not do.

Having read this paragraph, one might expect Justice Stevens to then conclude that, even if there is no way (absent federal statute) to judicially enforce this obligation against Texas, nevertheless Texas is constitutionally required to do the right thing.

But for some reason, Justice Stevens pulls his punches at the last minute: Instead of writing that “The Court’s judgment, which I join, does not change the fact that the State of Texas is required to take appropriate action to prevent a breach,” Stevens writes that “The Court’s judgment, which I join, does not foreclose further appropriate action by the State of Texas.”

As though Texas has a choice in the matter.

Can anyone reconcile this closing sentence with Stevens’s earlier paragraph (quoted above), which (correctly, in my view) speaks of Texas’s constitutional “duty” and “obligation”?

Six to three. The decision is here. My very quick and preliminary reaction, after having read only a bit of the opinion, is that the presidential power question is not the most important aspect of the opinion. That would be, instead, the Court’s interpretation of Article 94 of the U.N. Charter as merely imposing a future obligation on the U.S. federal political branches to do something to comply with its requirement — and not to impose any independent obligation on the United States, including Texas, to actually take steps to comply with an ICJ judgment. This strikes me as an implausible interpretation, and as potentially very troubling for construction of treaty obligations going forward.

The article reads that the U.S. “undertakes to comply with with the decision of the [ICJ] in any case to which it is a party.”

The Court reads this obligation not to actually require the United States and its component parts to, uh, actually comply with an ICJ decision. Indeed, it apparently permits Texas (part of the U.S., last time I checked) to intentionally refuse to comply with such a decision.

What will this sort of treaty interpretation portend for, say, article 16 of the CAT, which provides that “each State Party shall undertake to prevent in any territory under its jurisdiction other acts of cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment”?” Apparently, that no longer means we are forbidden from intentionally inflicting such treatment on detainees — or so the Chief Justice reasons.