CERL Faculty Director Claire Finkelstein filed an amicus brief before the U.S. Supreme Court in the case Khalid Shaikh Mohammad et al. v. United States. The brief urges the Supreme Court to grant Khalid Shaikh Mohammad and other petitioners’ application for certiorari in light of the profound rule of law issues raised.

She argues that then-Secretary of Defense Lloyd James Austin III’s withdrawal of the Department of Defense from the pretrial agreements with Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, Mustafa Ahmed Adam al-Hawsawi, and other detainees in the Guantánamo detention facility “was unlawful and ill-advised.” His intervention and the decision of the D.C. Circuit call into question the separation of powers between the executive branch and the congressionally established non-Article III courts. The brief also asserts that the revocation of the plea agreements compromised both the rights of the accused and those of the victims. A pathway to conviction is unlikely absent these agreements.

Claire Finkelstein is the Algernon Biddle Professor of Law and Professor of Philosophy at the University of Pennsylvania and the Faculty Director of the Center for Ethics and the Rule of Law. Read her bio here.  

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