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A federal judge in San Francisco has temporarily blocked the Trump administration's sweeping overhaul of the federal government. The ruling from U.S. District Judge Susan Illston, a Clinton appointee, came after a hearing Friday in a lawsuit filed by a coalition of labor unions, nonprofits and local governments. The plaintiffs argue in their complaint that President Trump's efforts to "radically restructure and dismantle the federal government" without any authorization from Congress violate the Constitution. Illston agreed with the plaintiffs, asserting in the hearing that Supreme Court precedent makes clear that while the president does have the authority to seek changes...

A federal judge has taken the fateful step of ruling that three of the 600 prisoners at Bagram air base in Afghanistan have rights under the U.S. Constitution. This is dangerous folly. One can only pray that higher courts reject Judge John Bates' premise that noncitizens are not barred - as long thought - from contesting war captivity abroad in American civilian courts. While Bates emphasized the distinct circumstances of the three, he built his holding on the notion that U.S. control of Bagram gave prisoners a leg up on getting into court. Activists who have taken up the cause...

Letter From J. Edgar Hoover, Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), to the President's Special Consultant, Admiral Sidney Souers Washington, July 7, 1950 My Dear Admiral: For some months representatives of the FBI and of the Department of Justice have been formulating a plan of action for an emergency situation wherein it would be necessary to apprehend and detain persons who are potentially dangerous to the internal security of the country. I thought you would be interested in a brief outline of the plan. Action to Be Taken By the Department of Justice The plan envisions four types...

Throughout yesterday’s argument in the Guantanamo detainee cases, all eyes were focused, of course, on Justice Kennedy. With the Court presumably divided 4-4 along ideological lines, Kennedy once again is at the wheel, deciding where he’s going to take the car. He’s taken a left in the past, joining with liberals to rule against the Bush Administration in earlier legal challenges in the war on terror. And last spring, after the Court first decided it was premature to take up the detainees’ case, Kennedy later took the highly unusual step of switching his vote to jump into it (as did...

At times like this, I really, really, really love my job. You see, this is the semester that I get to teach Constitutional Law. I have 20 eager and vocal undergraduates (a large class, by my institution’s standards) currently enrolled. They’ve been primed by two rounds of Supreme Court nomination hearings, not to mention a very public and spirited debate over the scope and extent of the President’s inherent Constitutional power to wage war. They have facts. They have opinions. And they are ready, willing, and able to duke it out with their colleagues. Whee!  When we came to Hamdi...

At least eight inmates freed from Guantanamo Bay return to battle U.S. and coalition troops. WASHINGTON — At least eight inmates released from detention at the U.S. military base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, have returned to the battlefield against U.S. and coalition troops in Afghanistan and Pakistan, prompting complaints inside the Pentagon that international pressure had undermined the U.S. effort to fight Islamic fundamentalism. The most recent case is that of Abdullah Mehsud, a former Taliban commander released from the detention facility in March, who masterminded the recent kidnapping of two Chinese engineers in Pakistan. One of the engineers was...

Filed at 1:18 p.m. ET WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Supreme Court said Friday it will decide whether authorities can imprison indefinitely hundreds of Cuban immigrant criminals and other illegal foreigners with no country to accept them. About 2,220 people are in jail now, in limbo because the U.S. government says they're too dangerous to be freed but they have no homeland. The Bush administration wants the court to say that longtime detentions are OK, especially in light of post-Sept. 11 concerns about protecting America's borders. But the government narrowly lost the last time the issue came before the high court....

WASHINGTON, Jan. 12 — The Supreme Court on Monday turned down an appeal challenging the secrecy surrounding the arrest and detention of hundreds of people, nearly all Muslim men, in the weeks after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. Without comment, the court let stand a ruling by a federal appeals court here that had accepted the Bush administration's rationale for refusing to disclose either the identities of those it arrested, most of whom have since been deported for immigration violations unrelated to terrorism, or the circumstances of the arrests. A complete list of the names "would give terrorist organizations...