Rasul v. Bush

Rasul v. Bush is a 2004 decision of the Supreme Court of the United States, dealing with the legality of extrajudicial detention of persons, suspected of al-Qaeda and Taliban membership, at the Guantanamo Bay detention camp. The Court determined "United States courts have jurisdiction to consider challenges to the legality of the detention of foreign nationals captured abroad in connection with hostilities and incarcerated at Guantanamo Bay." This decision did not rule on the legality of the charges against the petitioners, merely that they could ask for review in the Federal judicial system. It was also specific to Guantanamo; it would not apply, for example, to prisoners at Bagram Theater Internment Facility.

Rasul et al. are 4 British, 2 Australians and 12 Kuwaitis, captured by U.S. troops in the Afghanistan War (2001-). The main argument by the Executive Branch was that In re Yamashita and Johnson v. Eisentrager allowed military jurisdiction outside the United States, although Yamashita was in the Phillipines, a U.S. possession at the time. The court found significant differences from Eisentrager, and observed that Eisentrager had only addresssed the prisoners’ right to habeas review.

Habeas was initially denied by the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. The case, by the time it reached the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, had been consolidated with two other habeas cases involving prisoners at Guantanamo, Habib v. Bush and Al Odah v. United States.

Factor	Johnson v. Eisentrager	Rasul v. Bush	In re Yamashita
Citizenship	Nationals of a country at war with the U.S.	Not citizens of an opponent in a state of war	National of a state previously at war
Relationship to U.S.	Never been in U.S.
Capture	Captured outside U.S. territory and held in military custody		Captured in U.S. possession under military law; recognized prisoner of war
Judgment	Tried and convicted by military
Acts	Committed outside U.S. against troops	Deny plotting acts against the U.S.	Committed outside U.S. against troops and civilians
Custody	In disputed territory (postwar and occupation)	In territory over which the U.S. has exclusive control	In U.S. territory (postwar)

Habeas, in Braden v. 30th Judicial Circuit Court of Kentucky is addressed to the person holding the prisoner, not the prisoner. In Eisentrager, China and Germany were areas occupied during warfare, rather than Naval Station Guantanamo Bay, an area leased to the United States. While Guantanamo Bay is not on U.S. soil, it has a much closer relationship to the U.S. judicial system than did China or Germany, or indeed Afghanistan. In the words of the Court, "By the express terms of its agreements with Cuba, the United States exercises complete jurisdiction and control over the Guantanamo Base, and may continue to do so permanently if it chooses."

The George W. Bush Administration argued that legislation is presumed not to have extraterritorial application unless Congress clearly manifests such an intent. They agreed that if an American citizen, at Guantanamo, were to make a habeas petition, there would be federal court jurisdiction. The Court said "there is little reason to think that Congress intended the statute’s geographical coverage to vary depending on the detainee’s citizenship. Aliens held at the base, like American citizens, are entitled to..." Federal courts.