Forum Choice for Terrorist Suspects

Aziz Huq, assistant professor of law at the University of Chicago Law School, discusses what forum should be employed to adjudicate the status of terrorist suspects.

Recent clashes between Congress and the President have yielded highly controversial provisions in a recent National Defense Authorization Act that might force such adjudications into a military forum. The problem of forum choice is typically framed as a simple matter of law, but this assumes doctrinal rules can easily sort suspects between civilian and military venues.

However, the choice of forum question can better be understood as a problem of institutional design. Huq also discusses the key institutional design decision that is jurisdictional redundancy, which is currently pervasive but is prone to abuse and needlessly costly.

Aziz Huq has clerked for Judge Robert D. Sack of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit and Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg of the Supreme Court. He has worked as Associate Counsel and Director of the Liberty and National Security Project of the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU School of Law, and has also been a Senior Consultant Analyst for the International Crisis Group.