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CONSTITUTIONAL LAW I
Professor Mike Ramsey
Spring 2014
Constitutional Law Hypothetical #1
After the September 2001 terrorist attacks, Congress passed a law, called the
Authorization for the Use of Military Force (AUMF), which authorizes the President to:
“use all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations, or
persons he determines planned, authorized, committed or aided the terrorist
attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, or harbored such organizations or
persons, in order to prevent any future act of international terrorism against the
United States….”
A pre-9/11 law, the Non-Detention Act, states that: “No citizen shall be imprisoned or
otherwise detained by the United States except pursuant to an Act of Congress.”
In November 2001, President Bush launched a military operation to overthrow the
Taliban government of Afghanistan, which had harbored the terrorists responsible for the
9/11 attacks. In the course of this campaign, U.S. forces captured and detained (among
many other people) Yassir Hamdi, a U.S. citizen who was (allegedly) fighting for the
Taliban. The U.S. military regarded Hamdi as an “enemy combatant”; as a result, they
planned to detain him for the duration of the fighting (but they did not plan to charge him
with any crimes).
Hamdi brought suit against the Secretary of Defense, objecting to his continued
detention on ground (among others) that the executive branch lacked authority to detain
him. Assess his claim under the approaches advanced by the various Justices in the Steel
Seizure case. How many different plausible outcomes in Hamdi can you identify?