Guantanamo and the Abuse of Presidential Power (The US Constitution and Military Law) - Softcover

Margulies, Joseph

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0743286863 ISBN 13: 9780743286862

Publisher: Simon & Schuster, 2007

Synopsis

The detention system established by the Bush Administration at Guantanamo Bay Naval Station in Cuba is like no other in our nation's history. Joseph Margulies traces the development of this detention policy from its ill-conceived creation in 2002 as "the ideal interrogation chamber" to its present form, where most prisoners are held without charges in a super-maximum security prison, even though the U.S. government has acknowledged that many have been cleared for release and most of the others are not even alleged to have committed a hostile act against the United States or its allies. Margulies, who was the lead attorney in the Supreme Court case Rasul v. Bush, writes that Guantanamo and other secret CIA and Defense Department detention centers around the world have become "prisons beyond the law," where the Administration claims the right to hold people indefinitely, incommunicado, and in solitary confinement without charges, access to counsel, and without benefit of the Geneva Conventions. Weaving together firsthand accounts of military personnel who witnessed the interrogations at Guantanamo along with the words of the prisoners themselves, Margulies exposes the chilling reality of a "war on terror" that masks an assault on basic human rights - rights to which the United States has always subscribed.

About this title

About the Author

Joseph Margulies is an attorney with the MacArthur Justice Center and a law professor at Northwestern University Law School in Chicago. He and his wife live in Chicago.

From Publishers Weekly

Margulies, a Minneapolis lawyer and civil rights activist, served as lead counsel in Rasul v. Bush, successfully petitioning the Supreme Court to extend the right of judicial review to all prisoners at Guantánamo Bay. This book, Margulies's first, minutely chronicles the attempts of the present administration to extend the bounds of presidential authority while limiting official culpability. Breaking new ground by comprehensively analyzing the government's legal reasoning and deconstructing it in the light of historical precedent, Margulies states: "The Bush Administration has not provided a complete explanation for its detention policy. (Part of the motivation for this book is that no one else has either.)" Interspersed with accounts of his fascinating and frustrating attempts to obtain access to his British client, Shafiq Rasul, Margulies shines light on the theory and practice of indefinite military detention, peering into a self-contained, Kafkaesque universe of our own creation barely 90 miles from American shores. Accessible to nonlawyers, the book also offers full citations for those who wish to do further research. Margulies's clear explications of intricate legal points move his narrative effortlessly from the signing of the Geneva Conventions through the conflicts in Korea and Vietnam, to the myriad cases of the detainees in Guantánamo. (July)
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Edition details

• Publisher: Simon & Schuster
• Publication date: 2007
• ISBN 10: 0743286863
• ISBN 13: 9780743286862
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 352