Senator Carl Levin Part II addressing habeas corpus as it relates to the Udall amendment.

[MrBaz744]

But no matter how the question presented in Padilla gets answered, any American citizen, whether captured on US soil, or on the battlefield, is entitled to a hearing.

[MrBaz744]

Thus, the indefinite detention status before NDAA 2012 was: if captured on the battlefield, a US citizen could be detained indefinitely, but was entitled to a hearing to test the factual predicates of his detention. If working with a terrorist group, but captured in the US, it is technically unknown, but widely believed a citizen cannot be held indefinitely. NDAA deliberately left that unknown status as it was, for judicial determination.

[MrBaz744]

The Supreme Court never heard Padilla. Because authorities believed they would lose before the Supreme Court, Padilla was shifted from military to civilian detention authority, and the case was dropped.

[MrBaz744]

Padilla would have clarified the limits of Hamdi, had it gone to the Supreme Court. In Padilla, a US citizen working with Al-Qaeda was captured on US soil, at an airport. The difference in where Padilla was captured matters. To make a long story short, one of the courts that heard Padilla said Padilla could not be indefinitely detained since he was captured on US soil. Another court said he could be, because he had once been on the battlefield in Afghanistan.

[MrBaz744]

No. Habeas Corpus is alive and well. NDAA 2012 did not repeal it. All NDAA 2012 really did was codify authority already thought to exist by all relevant constitutional actors. That authority did not authorize indefinite detention of any US citizen without at least a hearing to test the factual predicates for detention. To be clear, Hamdi authorized indefinite detention of a US citizen caught on the battlefield fighting against American forces. But even Hamdi said they get hearings.

[newsradiohead]

Habeas Corpus is not violated if the detainment is legal. Since they consider citizens to be enemy combatants if so defined, indefinite detainment until "end of hostilities" is not a violation of Habeas Corpus. Senator Levin is not lying, but he's not telling the full truth.

[MrBaz744]

No provision of any law suspends Habeas Corpus in any case.

[newsradiohead]

@MrBaz744 Perhaps. But Habeas Corpus is dead, de facto. Both Bush and Obama have interpreted the Declaration of Emergency Powers, which Congress has granted the President since 9/11, as giving them the right to detain prisoners indefinitely without the writ of H.C.