Civil Liberties, Habeas Corpus, and the War on Terror
Jennifer Proctor
POL201: American National Government
Instructor: Luke Martin
10/29/12

Habeas Corpus has been around for very many years. Although no one knows its exact origin it still dates back pretty far. Habeas Corpus has been seen as a good thing and a bad thing. It has been around for every war we have had. It has also been suspended by two of our presidents in the past. The story and history of Habeas Corpus is a very old one but it is also a very interesting one too.

Habeas corpus, a Latin term meaning "you have the body," an important right granted to individuals in America and refers to the right of every
He determined that certain person were in fact ‘’enemy combatant’’ during the Global War on Terror. President Bush received a lot of criticism because of this. The main reason was because of not specifying who these ‘’enemy combatants’’ were. A man named Jonathan Turley who was a professor of constitutional law at George Washington University stated; ‘’what, really, a time of shame this is for the American system. What congress did and what the president has signed today essentially revokes over 200 years of American principles and values’’. The right to habeas corpus guarantees that a detained person will have access to a court with jurisdiction to rule on the legality of the detention and to order the person’s release if it is unlawful. The proper view of this right has definitely been the subject of a lot debate since the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, particularly with regard to persons detained by United States forces at the Guantanamo Bay Naval Base in Cuba and Bigram Air Base in Afghanistan. On June 12th 2008, the Supreme Court ruled, in Boumediene vs. Bush, 5 to 4 that Guantanamo captives were entitled to access the U.S. Justice system. Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote in the majority opinion: The laws and Constitution are designed to survive, and remain in force, in extraordinary times. The Court also ruled that the Combatant Status Review Tribunals were "inadequate". Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer, David Souter and John Paul Stevens