Khalad A. F. Al Odah v. Us

Questions presented

SCOTUS records, cert granted 29 Jun 2007

1. Did the D.C. Circuit err in relying again on Johnson v. Eisentrager, 339 U.S. 763 (1950), to dismiss these petitions and to hold that petitioners have no common law right to habeas protected by the Suspension Clause and no constitutional rights whatsoever, despite this Court’s ruling in Rasul v. Bush, 542 U.S. 466 (2004), that these petitioners are in a fundamentally different position from those in Eisentrager, that their access to the writ is consistent with the historical reach of the writ at common law, and that they are confined within the territorial jurisdiction of the United States?
2. Given that the Court in Rasul concluded that the writ at common law would have extended to persons detained at Guantanamo, did the D.C. Circuit err in holding that petitioners’ right to the writ was not protected by the Suspension Clause because they supposedly would not have been entitled to the writ at common law?
3. Are petitioners, who have been detained without charge or trial for more than five years in the exclusive custody of the United States at Guantanamo, a territory under the plenary and exclusive jurisdiction of the United States, entitled to the protection of the Fifth Amendment right not to be deprived of liberty without due process of law and of the Geneva Conventions?
4. Should section 7(b) of the Military Commissions Act of 2006, which does not explicitly mention habeas corpus, be construed to eliminate the courts’ jurisdiction over petitioners’ pending habeas cases, thereby creating serious constitutional issues?

Opinion summary

Etalia.ai summary of the majority opinion

The case involves Khalad A. F. Al Odah and other detainees held at Guantanamo Bay, who challenged their detention by filing habeas corpus petitions in U.S. federal courts. The central issue was whether foreign nationals detained as enemy combatants outside the United States had the right to challenge their detention through habeas corpus under U.S. law. The Supreme Court's decision focused on jurisdictional questions related to the Detainee Treatment Act of 2005 and its impact on pending cases, particularly concerning whether it stripped federal courts of jurisdiction over these habeas petitions from non-citizens held at Guantanamo Bay.