The Enemy Combatant Papers

The shame is in the details. Here is the record of what President Bush and his lawyers have done to American principles in detaining alleged terrorists, including U.S. citizens, without charges or trial. Some day--and it should be soon--all those responsible for this tormenting of the Constitution will be judged. The legal arguments are laid out in this book, coldly and compellingly. ---Anthony Lewis The definitive documentation of one of the most troubling experiments in modern history - the Bush administration's effort to establish the authority to capture and detain indefinitely anyone anywhere in the world, on the President's say-so that they are 'bad guys.' This necessary volume provides both the first-hand documents and the critical overview necessary to see how that experiment was launched, challenged, defeated, and revived. ---David Cole, Georgetown Law Center The Bush Administration charted a radical new set of legal policies after the events of 9/11. In concept they all came to the same focus: to give the president, as commander-in-chief, unprecedented power over persons who had been detained in the campaigns that followed. Of all the various approaches used, one of the most audacious was the introduction of a distinctive and new casting of the idea of enemy combatant which was designed to strip away a system of protections and rights that developed as a part of international humanitarian law over the prior century. This book collects original materials that document the evolution of this legal concept and a series of extraordinarily insightful introductory essays that put it all in clear perspective. ---Scott Horton, Columbia Law School This comprehensive volume tells a powerful story -- of executive power run amok, the human beings left in its wake, and the effort to use the courts to restore the rule of law and balance of powers in this country. When the definitive history of this period is written, those who write it will turn to this impressive collection as a primary source. ---Elisa Massimino, Washington Director, Human Rights First A valuable collection of primary source documents. It will be useful for law libraries, medium to large academic libraries, and collections focused on terrorism or national security. ---Choice