The Enemy Combatant Papers: American Justice, the Courts, and the War on Terror
- Release Date: 02/10/2008
- Country of Issue: United States of America
- Category: Academic and professional books
"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
When The Torture Papers was published in 2005, it sent shockwaves that continue to be felt across the United States and the rest of the world. Editors Karen J. Greenberg and Joshua L. Dratel released a troubling compilation of memos and reports U.S. officials wrote to determine how detainees would be treated in facilities in Afghanistan, Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and Iraqs Abu Ghraib prison and what interrogation techniques would be permissible.
Its pages included documents written by President Bush, then Legal Counsel to the President Alberto Gonzales, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, Secretary of State Colin Powell, and others. The New York Times called The Torture Papers “…necessary, if grueling, reading for anyone interested in understanding the back story to those terrible photos from Saddam Husseins former prison, and abuses at other American detention facilities.”
This fall Karen J. Greenberg and Joshua L. Dratel present The Enemy Combatant Papers: American Justice, the Courts, and the War on Terror (Cambridge University Press; October 2, 2008). Greenberg and Dratel detail the five major enemy combatant cases of the post–9/11 era.
The Supreme Court cases covered in detail in this volume constitute one of the most important chapters in American history. Preserving key constitutional rights of due process and the rule of law trumped the efforts of a president attempting to use the war on terror to create an executive branch able to operate outside established legal norms.
Presented in narrative form, these original documents tell the story that clarifies the questions at the heart of the American detention of alleged combatants in the war on terror. These documents discuss the right to counsel, the right to a trial, the right for the accused to see the evidence against him, and the intersection between domestic and international law.
The Enemy Combatant Papers highlights the tension between the needs of national security and the liberties allotted to alleged enemies of the state by highlighting the basic question of what the U.S. Constitution guarantees and to whom.
In these documents, the reader will follow the evolving arguments about presidential powers in time of war, habeas corpus, the Geneva Conventions, balance of powers, and matters of detention and prisoner treatment.
Complemented with a comprehensive timeline and appendices that include the relevant cases from the American Civil War, World War II, and the Korean War and the premises for setting up military commissions and Combatant Status Review Tribunals, The Enemy Combatant Papers is meant for those who seek to understand the issues – legal, political, and military – that have dominated the search for balance between justice and security in the war on terror.
ENDS
Notes for Editors:
Karen J. Greenberg is the Executive Director of the Center on Law and Security at the New York University School of Law. She is the editor of the NYU Review of Law and Security; co-editor of The Torture Papers: The Road to Abu Ghraib, with Joshua L. Dratel; editor of the books Al Qaeda Now and The Torture Debate in America; and author of The Least Worst Place: Guantanamo’s First 100 Days.
Joshua L. Dratel is a practicing attorney in New York City. Dratel, a past President of the New York State Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers and member of the Board of Directors of the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, has been defense counsel in several terrorism and national security prosecutions, including that of Sami Omar Al-Hussayen, who was acquitted in federal court in Idaho in 2004, and Wadih El-Hage, a defendant in United States v. Osama bin Laden, which involved August 1998 bombings of the United States embassies in Kenya and Tanzania.
Dratel currently represents Mohamed El-Mazain, a defendant in the federal prosecution of the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development, and, on appeal, Lynne Stewart, a New York lawyer convicted of material support for terrorism. He is co-editor with Karen J. Greenberg of The Torture Papers: The Road to Abu Ghraib.
Karen Greenberg and Joshua Dratel are available for interviews.
The Enemy Combatant Papers: American Justice, the Courts, and the War on Terroredited by Karen J. Greenberg & Joshua L. Dratel will be published by Cambridge University Press on October 2, 2008 $85.00 | 1,008 Pages | ISBN: 978-0-521-88647-5
If you would like more information, contact the Press Office:
- Telephone: +44 (0)1223 325544
- Fax: +44 (0)1223 325062
- Email: press@cambridge.org
- Post: The Press Office, University Printing House, Shaftesbury Road, Cambridge, CB2 8BS, United Kingdom