How to Close Guantanamo: A Legal Minefield
Few attorneys better understand the legal dilemmas surrounding the U.S. military prison in Guantnamo Bay, Cuba, than Neal Katyal. In 2006, Katyal led a successful Supreme Court case challenging the legality of the Bush Administration’s military tribunals in Guantnamo, a ruling that sounded one of the first death knells for Camp X-Ray. But two years later, difficult questions about how to close Guantnamo continue to vex legal minds ranging from Katyal to the advisers now gathering around President-elect Barack Obama. “This is a huge and difficult problem,” says Katyal, who teaches national-security law at Georgetown University. “I don’t actually see obvious answers.”