by Aziz Huq
In June of this year, the Supreme Court issued what Ronald Dworkin hailed as "one of the most important Supreme Court decisions in recent years" when it held that the detainees at the Guantanámo Bay Naval Base are entitled to make "habeas corpus" challenges against the government's purported bases for detaining them.
Indisputably, the 5-4 judgment in Boumediene v. Bush was a major civil liberties victory. It should indeed have major repercussions beyond Guantanámo because it makes clear that at a minimum, constitutional rules ensuring fair process limit governmental actors in all the territorial United States.
This might sound like old news, but in fact it should precipitate the end of some troubling practices at the borders. When a non-citizen now arrives in the United States, immigration officials can place that person in "expedited removal," which means they can be shipped back to a place where they may fear torture without any judicial review. Since 9/11, the Department of Homeland Security has expanded the use of " expedited removal" in ways that can be squarely challenged now.
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