Hamdan vs. Rumsfeld
In November 2001, Salim Ahmed Hamdan, a 31-year-old Yemeni, was captured and turned over to U.S. forces in Afghanistan. After confessing to being Osama bin Laden's driver, Hamdan was transferred to Guantánamo Bay, and was soon designated by President Bush for trial before a special military tribunal. The Pentagon assigned a military defense lawyer to represent him, a 35-year-old graduate of the Naval Academy, Lieutenant Commander Charles Swift. No one expected Swift to mount much of a defense. The rules of the tribunals, America's first in over fifty years, were stacked against him--assuming he wasn't expected to throw the game altogether. Instead, with the help of a young constitutional law professor at Georgetown, Neal Katyal, Swift sued the Bush Administration over the legality of the tribunals. In 2006, Katyal argued the case before the Supreme Court and won. This is the inside story of what may be the most important decision on presidential power and the rule of law in the history of the Supreme Court.--From publisher description.
