Hamdi v. Rumsfeld

On September 11, 2001, the al Qaeda terrorist network hijacked several commercial airliners in order to destroy prominent targets in the United States. Some three thousand people lost their lives in the attacks. A week later Congress passed a resolution authorizing the president to “use all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations, or persons he determines [Page 269] planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks [or] harbored such organizations or persons, in order to prevent any future acts of international terrorism against the United States….” Based on this “Authorization for Use of Military Force” (AUMF), the president ordered U.S. military forces into Afghanistan to conquer al Qaeda operatives and any of their supporters, such as the Taliban—a group of Islamic “holy warriors” who ruled Afghanistan from 1996 to 2001.

Yaser Esam Hamdi was born an American citizen in Louisiana in 1980 and moved with his family to Saudi Arabia as a child. Later, having moved to Afghanistan by 2001, he was captured by local militiamen as a terrorist sympathizer and turned over to the U.S. military. After interrogating Hamdi, the military transferred him to the United States for further detention. In June 2002 Hamdi’s father filed a petition of habeas corpus—a request for a judicial writ that orders the prisoner to be brought to court so that those holding him may explain why he is lawfully being detained—in a U.S. district court. The particular petition in question also asked the court, among other things, to appoint legal counsel for Hamdi; order that he no longer be interrogated; declare that he is being held in violation of the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments; schedule an evidentiary hearing; and order Hamdi’s release.

The district court ordered additional material regarding the detainee’s status; but on review, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit found that Hamdi could be held as an enemy combatant and that his status as an American citizen did not change this conclusion. The government had alleged that Hamdi had been affiliated with a Taliban unit in Afghanistan, had received military training, and had “remained with his Taliban unit following the attacks of September 11”; and, therefore, the president had authority under Article II of the Constitution to detain him, or, in the alternative, that Congress, in fact, had authorized such detentions through the AUMF.

The plurality opinion of the Supreme Court, which was announced by Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, concluded that due process required that a U.S. citizen being held as an enemy combatant must be given a meaningful opportunity to contest the factual basis for his or her detention. After agreeing that the president was authorized by AUMF to detain individuals such as Hamdi, the Court cited the test articulated in Matthews v. Eldridge (1976) “for balancing serious competing interests,” in this case Hamdi’s “most elemental of liberty interests…in being free from physical detention by [his] own government” and the “sensitive governmental interests in ensuring that those who in fact fought with our enemy during a war do not return to battle against the United States.”

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