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The U.S. detention center at Guantanamo Bay has long been synonymous with torture, secrecy, and the abuse of executive power. It has come to epitomize lawlessness and has sparked protracted legal battles and political debate. For too long, however, Guantanamo has been viewed in isolation and has overshadowed a larger, interconnected global detention system that includes other military prisons such as Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan, secret CIA jails, and the transfer of prisoners to other countries for torture. Guantanamo is simply - and alarmingly - the most visible example of a much larger prison system designed to operate outside the law.Habeas Corpus after 9/11 examines the rise of the U.S.-run global detention system that emerged after 9/11 and the efforts to challenge it through habeas corpus (a petition to appear in court to claim unlawful imprisonment). Habeas expert and litigator Jonathan Hafetz gives us an insider's view of the detention of enemy combatants and an accessible explanation of the complex forces that keep these systems running. In the age of terrorism, some argue that habeas corpus is impractical and unwise. Hafetz advocates that it remains the single most important check against arbitrary and unlawful detention, torture, and the abuse of executive power.

Despite its mystique as the greatest Anglo-American legal protection, habeas corpus' history features power plays, political hypocrisy, ad hoc jurisprudence, and failures in securing individual liberty. This book tells the story of the writ from medieval England to modern America, crediting the rocky history to the writ's very nature as a government power. The book weighs in on habeas' historical controversies - addressing its origins, the relationship between king and parliament, the US Constitution's Suspension Clause, the writ's role in the power struggle between the federal government and the states, and the proper scope of federal habeas for state prisoners and wartime detainees from the Civil War and World War II to the War on Terror. It stresses the importance of liberty and detention policy in making the writ more than a tool of power. The book presents a more nuanced and critical view of the writ's history, showing the dark side of this most revered judicial power.

The Civil War placed the U.S. Constitution under unprecedented--and, to this day, still unmatched--strain. InLincoln and the Triumph of the Nation, Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Mark Neely examines for the first time in one book the U.S. Constitution and its often overlooked cousin, the Confederate Constitution, and the ways the documents shaped the struggle for national survival.Previous scholars have examined wartime challenges to civil liberties and questions of presidential power, but Neely argues that the constitutional conflict extended to the largest questions of national existence. Drawing on judicial opinions, presidential state papers, and political pamphlets spiced with the everyday immediacy of the partisan press, Neely reveals how judges, lawyers, editors, politicians, and government officials, both North and South, used their constitutions to fight the war and save, or create, their nation.Lincoln and the Triumph of the Nationilluminates how the U.S. Constitution not only survived its greatest test but emerged stronger after the war. That this happened at a time when the nation's very existence was threatened, Neely argues, speaks ultimately to the wisdom of the Union leadership, notably President Lincoln and his vision of the American nation.

Traces the history of the writ of habeas corpus and its influence on federal-state relations. The writ of habeas corpus is the principal means by which state prisoners, many on death row, attack the constitutionality of their conviction in federal courts. In The Body and the State, Cary Federman contends that habeas corpus is more than just a get-out-of-jail-free card-it gives death row inmates a constitutional means of overturning a jury's mistaken determination of guilt. Tracing the history of the writ since 1789, Federman examines its influence on federal-state relations and argues that habeas corpus petitions turn legal language upside down, threatening the states' sovereign judgment to convict and execute criminals as well as upsetting the discourse, created by the Supreme Court, that the federal-state relationship ought not be disturbed by convicted criminals making habeas corpus appeals. He pays particular attention to the changes in the discourse over federalism and capital punishment that have restricted the writ's application over time.

In April 1861, President Abraham Lincoln suspended the writ of habeas corpus along the military line between Washington, D.C., and Philadelphia. This allowed army officers to arrest and indefinitely detain persons who were interfering with military operations in the area. When John Merryman, a wealthy Marylander suspected of burning bridges to prevent the passage of U.S. troops to Washington, was detained in Fort McHenry, the chief justice of the Supreme Court, Roger Taney, declared the suspension of habeas corpus unconstitutional and demanded Merryman's immediate release. Lincoln defied Taney's order, offering his own forceful counter-argument for the constitutionality of his actions. Thus the stage was set for one of the most dramatic personal and legal confrontations the country has ever witnessed. The Body of John Merryman is the first book-length examination of this much-misunderstood chapter in American history. Brian McGinty captures the tension and uncertainty that surrounded the early months of the Civil War, explaining how Lincoln's suspension of habeas corpus was first and foremost a military action that only subsequently became a crucial constitutional battle. McGinty's narrative brings to life the personalities that drove this uneasy standoff and expands our understanding of the war as a legal—and not just a military, political, and social—conflict. The Body of John Merryman is an extraordinarily readable book that illuminates the contours of one of the most significant cases in American legal history—a case that continues to resonate in our own time.

There has been considerable controversy over the last century about Abraham Lincoln’s record on the Constitution and individual rights during the Civil War. Lincoln suspended Habeas Corpus during the war - the only time this basic political right has ever been suspended in American history. Neely first examines the whole range of Lincoln’s constitutional policies and, in particular, shows who was convicted and jailed for what crimes during the war. He puts this whole discussion into the political context of the time. The result is a mixed record but one that basically reflects well on Lincoln.

2012 American Bar Association Gavel Award Honorable Mention for Books 2012 Scribes Book Silver Medal Award presented by the American Society of Legal Writers The U.S. detention center at Guantánamo Bay has long been synonymous with torture, secrecy, and the abuse of executive power. It has come to epitomize lawlessness and has sparked protracted legal battles and political debate. For too long, however, Guantánamo has been viewed in isolation and has overshadowed a larger, interconnected global detention system that includes other military prisons such as Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan, secret CIA jails, and the transfer of prisoners to other countries for torture. Guantánamo is simply—and alarmingly—the most visible example of a much larger prison system designed to operate outside the law. Habeas Corpus after 9/11 examines the rise of the U.S.-run global detention system that emerged after 9/11 and the efforts to challenge it through habeas corpus (a petition to appear in court to claim unlawful imprisonment). Habeas expert and litigator Jonathan Hafetz gives us an insider’s view of the detention of “enemy combatants” and an accessible explanation of the complex forces that keep these systems running. In the age of terrorism, some argue that habeas corpus is impractical and unwise. Hafetz advocates that it remains the single most important check against arbitrary and unlawful detention, torture, and the abuse of executive power.

Every time human rights lawyer Clive Stafford Smith lands in Cuba, he takes the eight o'clock ferry to the windward side; his journey ends at Guantánamo Bay. One of the few people in the world who has ongoing independent access to the prison, Smith reveals the grotesque injustices that are perpetrated there in the name of national security—including the justifications created to legitimate the use of torture and the bureaucratic structures that have been put in place to shield prison authorities from legal accountability. By bearing witness to the stories of the forty prisoners that he represents, Smith asks us to consider what is done to American democracy when the rule of law is jettisoned in the name of combating terrorism.