Stop the abuse of Habeus corpus.

PositionLaw & Justice

Habeus corpus in the U.S. is being seriously misused and needs to be reformed, insist professors of law Nancy J. King of Vanderbilt University, Nashville, Tenn., and Joseph L Hoffman of Indiana University, Bloomington, coauthors of Habeus for the 21st Century: Uses, Abuses, and the Future of the Great Writ.

"Habeus corpus--one of the most important and cherished protections against abuse of government power--is being used primarily for the day-to-day review of routine state criminal cases," Hoffman laments. "This is a tremendous waste of scarce resources and, even worse, it undermines public respect for habeus and thereby threatens its future."

Throughout its long history, habeus has been used by courageous judges to rein in the powers of the president, Confess, or states whenever those powers become abused during periods of social or political, crisis.

"We can easily see the real value of habeus in the current War on Tenor," Hoffman notes. "The president, with the help of Congress, tried to block those who might be wrongly imprisoned at Guantanamo from gaining access to a civilian court. Habeus gave judges the power to fight back--and, in the process, to help men like Lakhdar Boumediene, who was held at Guantanamo for more than seven years even though he was...

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