Document Type
Article
Publication Date
2006
Publication Title
Virginia Law Review
Abstract
This article uncovers the roots of Rasul v. Bush, the landmark Supreme Court decision holding that federal courts have jurisdiction to hear challenges to the detention at Guantanamo Bay Naval Base, Cuba, of foreign nationals captured abroad in the war on terror. Under entrenched views of precedent shared by lower courts, commentators, and the parties alike, the Court could only reach that result by either distinguishing or overruling Johnson v. Eisentrager, a World War II case that had found no jurisdiction for habeas petitioners captured and detained abroad. However, Justice Stevens' opinion for the Court took a more peculiar tack: It declared the case already overruled. Even stranger, the opinion did so by relying on an obscure dissent from an earlier case ignored by everyone else as irrelevant precedent concerning venue rather than jurisdiction. That dissent, in Ahrens v. Clark, was drafted in critical parts by a law clerk for Justice Rutledge named John Paul Stevens.
Volume
92
First Page
501
Recommended Citation
Joseph T. Thai, The Law Clerk Who Wrote Rasul v. Bush: John Paul Stevens's Influence from World War II to the War on Terror, 92 Va. L. Rev. 501 (2006).