The United States and NATO: The Formative Years

The U.S. Supreme Court’s behavior during the War on Terror represents a stark contrast from how the Court has previously viewed its responsibilities during wartime, especially as they relate to the treatment of noncitizens detained abroad. The Court has traditionally avoided questioning presidential policies on the capture and detention of suspected enemies during times of conflict. It has used its control over its own docket to refuse review of lower-court decisions dismissing challenges to foreign-policy decisions based on dubious claims of their involving “political questions” or being outside the domain of judicial authority. And, until the War on Terror, it drew a bright-line rule that seemed to categorically exclude noncitizens detained abroad from constitutional protection. However, in a series of cases from 2004 to 2008, the Court reversed its World War II–era doctrines that had permitted the federal government extensive discretion in its treatment of detainees captured during times of hostilities. The culmination of these decisions was its 2008 holding that foreign nationals detained at Guantanamo Bay have a constitutional right to habeas corpus hearings to challenge their detentions. This dissertation provides a normative defense of the Court’s decision-making process in its War on Terror habeas corpus cases. It reconstructs and analyzes the Court’s central arguments and shows the ethical significance of its assertion of an important judicial role in overseeing executive detention during wartime. In the process, it also provides an explanation and defense of the Court’s decision to stray from its World War II–era doctrines limiting the reach of the writ of habeas corpus and, by extension, of the Court’s ability to step in and defend the rights of foreign nationals abroad.

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“A Right of First Importance”: Habeas Corpus During the War on Terror

The United States and Nato: The Formative Years

Containment in Iran, 1946: The Shift to an Active Policy

This research employs stakeholder analysis based on the Advocacy Coalition Framework (ACF) to examine two coalitions of US foreign policy during the postwar and early Cold War periods. It defines the proponents of the Yalta axioms and the proponents of the Riga axioms as two purposive groups based on ideological positions. By identifying the stakeholders, their strategic bases, their belief systems (with respect to the Soviet Union), and their policies and resources, this research demonstrates how each coalition formed and competed with the other. More importantly, it offers a way to understand the seemingly inconsistent policy positions of Kennan and Bohlen that supported the Riga axioms at one time and opposed them at another time. By so doing, this research demonstrates the utility of the ACF in examining foreign policies.

Richard J. Powers

Papers

Who Fathered Containment

The National Security Constitution: Sharing Power After the Iran-Contra Affair Harold Hongju Koh New Haven: Yale University Press, 1990, pp. x, 340