Yaser Esam Hamdi and Esam Fouad Hamdi As Next Friend of Yaser Esam Hamdi v. Donald H. Rumsfeld, Secretary of Defense, et al. (542 U.S. 507)
U.S. Supreme Court · decided June 28, 2004 · Supreme Court Database (Spaeth)
- Citation
- 542 U.S. 507 · 124 S. Ct. 2633
- Decided
- June 28, 2004
- Term
- October Term 2003
- Vote
- 8–1
- Majority author
- Justice O'Connor
- Issue area
- Due Process
- Disposition
- Vacated and remanded
- Outcome
- Petitioning party won
- Ideological direction
- Liberal
Opinion excerpt
Justice O’Connor announced the judgment of the Court and delivered an opinion, in which The Chief Justice, Justice Kennedy, and Justice Breyer join. At this difficult time in our Nation’s history, we are called upon to consider the legality of the Government’s detention of a United States citizen on United States soil as an “enemy combatant” and to address the process that is constitutionally owed to one who seeks to challenge his classification as such. The United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit held that petitioner Yaser Hamdi’s detention was legally authorized and that he was entitled to no further opportunity to challenge his enemy-combatant label. We now vacate and remand. We hold that although Congress authorized the detention of combatants in the narrow circumstances alleged here, due process demands that a citizen held in the United States as an enemy combatant be given a meaningful opportunity to contest the factual basis for that detention before a neutral decisionmaker. I On September 11, 2001, the al Qaeda terrorist network used hijacked commercial airliners to attack prominent targets in the United States. Approximately 3,000 people were killed in those attacks. One week later, in response to these “acts of treacherous violence,” Congress passed a resolution authorizing the President to “use all necessary and appropriate force against those…
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