Factsheet: Boumediene v. Bush/Al Odah v. U.S. : The Supreme Court Decision

On June 12, 2008, the Supreme Court ruled in an historic decision in Boumediene v. Bush/Al Odah v. United States that the detainees at Guantánamo Bay have a constitutional right to habeas corpus, to challenge their detention before a neutral judge in a real court.

The men at Guantánamo have been struggling for this basic right to be recognized since 2002, when the first prisoners were brought to Guantánamo Bay, and when the Center for Constitutional Rights’ first challenge to their detention was filed. In 2004, in Rasul v. Bush, the Supreme Court upheld the detainees' statutory right to habeas corpus, and in 2006, in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld, the high court rejected the Bush administration's framework for military commissions and upheld the rights of the detainees under the Geneva Conventions.