Salim Ahmed Hamdan was a Yemeni citizen who formerly worked at an agricultural project that Osama Bin Laden created, was captured and sent to Guantanamo Bay after the invasion of Afghanistan. The Bush administration charged him in 2004 of conspiracy to commit terrorism and wanted to try him before a military commission (military commissions strip detainees of many civil rights they would have in a regular trial). The Supreme Court decided 5-3 that military commissions violated the Uniform Code of Military Justice and the Geneva Conventions and that President Bush didn’t have the congressional authority to try detainees though them. Justice Stevens wrote the majority opinion, with two concurrences written by Breyer and Kennedy, and the three dissenters—Scalia, Thomas, and Alito each writing their own dissents. Chief Justice Roberts didn’t take part in this case because he was on the three person panel which previously considered it on the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.
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