Pol 201 Week 5 Final Paper

POL 201 Week 5 Final Paper

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POL 201 Week 5 Final Paper

POL 201 Week 5 Final Paper Civil Liberties, Habeas Corpus, and the War on Terror

The final assignment for this course is a Final Paper. The purpose of the Final Paper is to give you an opportunity to apply much of what you have learned about American national government to an examination of civil liberties in the context of the war on terror. The Final Paper represents 20% of the overall course grade.

Soon after the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan in 2001, the Bush administration developed a plan for holding and interrogating captured prisoners. They were sent to a prison inside a U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay, on land leased from the government of Cuba. Since 2002, over 700 men have been detained at “GITMO.” Most have been released without charges or turned over to other governments. In 2011, Congress specifically prohibited the expenditure of funds to transfer GITMO prisoners to detention facilities in the continental United States, making it virtually impossible to try them in civilian courts. As of April 2012, 169 remained in detention at GITMO (Sutton, 2012).

An assumption made by the Bush administration in selecting this location was that it was beyond the jurisdiction of U.S. courts. The administration wanted to avoid any judicial oversight of how it handled detainees, characterized as “enemy combatants.” A possible legal challenge to indefinite detention with no formal charges or judicial proceedings might arise from the habeas corpus provision of the Constitution.

Article I, Section 9 of the Constitution states, “The Privilege of the Writ of Habeas Corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in Cases of Rebellion or Invasion the public Safety may require it.” Under this provision, persons detained by the government are entitled to a judicial hearing to determine if there is any legal basis for their detention. Some legal...