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Attorney for ‘enemy combatant’ held in U.S. to speak Feb. 7 |
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Kathleen Amerkhanian |
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Feb 5, 2007 |
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Ali al-Marri is the only person on the American mainland still held as an enemy combatant. Jonathan Hafetz is his lawyer. Less than a week after the case is scheduled to be argued in the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals, Hafetz will discuss it at UT Wednesday, Feb. 7.
The free, public talk, “Unchecked Executive Detention in the United States: The Case of Ali al-Marri,” will begin at noon in the Law Center Auditorium on Main Campus.
The case involves al-Marri’s challenge of the U.S. government’s authority to indefinitely detain him. Al-Marri is a foreigner living legally in the United States who has been detained since 2001 without charges and without access to the courts. The United States has argued that the courts cannot second-guess the president when he makes a determination that someone is an enemy combatant, especially when the person is a non-citizen; but lawyers have argued al-Marri has the right to require the government to prove its case against him in a court of law. The case’s significance recently was discussed in a New York Times article.
This is the first in a series of talks spring semester that will feature nationally known attorneys and scholars who will discuss the role the courts should or should not have in determining who should be detained in the War on Terror. Upcoming speakers will include:
• Thursday, March 1 — John Yoo, who was one of the authors of the so-called “torture memos” revealed during the confirmation hearings of U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales;
• Wednesday, March 21 — Mark Tushnet of Harvard Law; and
• Friday, March 30 — Neil Katyal, the attorney who successfully argued and won the U.S. Supreme Court case Hamdan v. Rumsfeld, which challenged the policy of military trials at Guantanamo Bay Naval Station.
Hafetz is a litigator for the Liberty and National Security Project at New York University Law School’s Brennan Center for Justice. He focuses on a range of post-Sept. 11 detention issues, government secrecy and immigrants’ rights.
He received his J.D. from Yale Law School, where he received honors for his advocacy and scholarship, and holds a master’s degree in history with high honors from Oxford University. The author of numerous articles in scholarly and popular publications, Hafetz frequently serves as an expert commentator for television and radio on liberty and national security issues.
The talk is co-sponsored by the UT College of Law student chapter of the American Constitution Society.
For more information, call UT Law Communications at 419.530.2712 or visit www.utlaw.edu.
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