In the first part of this book I explored the value of procedural rights in the debates about global justice. In this and subsequent parts of the book, I will discuss a handful of specific procedural rights. I will begin with a discussion of the right of habeas corpus as it was understood just prior to Magna Carta. Habeas corpus was at first merely the right to be brought out of detention and to have the charges against one publicly read. One could be immediately returned to detention after the reading and no other rights were involved. Yet Bracton and Blackstone, the great legal theorists of the thirteenth and eighteenth centuries, say that habeas corpus was fundamentally important, as have many legal theorists since.

Habeas corpus, at least in this first and most minimal version, is oddly procedural since there is no clear set of rules that need to be conformed to, except the one rule that a detainee can petition to be brought out of detention and have the charges against him or her read. But it is definitely not substantive in that there is no clear human good that is directly aimed at, or even one that is risked. Indeed, minimalist habeas corpus rights seem to be consistent with fairly great iniquity. Nonetheless, there is something very valuable indeed to this right. One only needs to think about Guantanamo in order to see what can happen when this right is systematically abridged – the challenges against detention at Guantanamo were all drawn in habeas corpus terms. Habeas corpus sets out a simple rule to be followed, and a rule that is so innocuous that it is hard to see why it would be of such importance for domestic or global justice. In this chapter I try to explain why this procedural right may be of the first importance for global justice.