The President and the Detainees
UNIVERSITY of PENNSYLVANIA LAW REVIEW Founded 1852 Formerly AMERICAN LAW REGISTER © 2017 University of Pennsylvania Law Review VOL. 165 FEBRUARY 2017 NO. 3 ARTICLE THE PRESIDENT AND THE DETAINEES AZIZ Z. HUQ† Entering the White House in 2009, President Barack Obama committed to closing the military detention facility at Guantánamo Bay in Cuba. Eight years later, the facility remains open. This Article uses the puzzle of why Obama’s goal proved so recalcitrant † Frank and Bernice J. Greenberg Professor of Law, University of Chicago. I am indebted to Ruixi Mao, Charles Zhang, Morgan Miller, and Dan Marcin—former and present research professionals at the Coase-Sandor Institute for Law and Economics—for their extensive help with preparing and analyzing data for this Article; Joey Burton, the Institute’s former director, graciously enabled their assistance. Several research assistants also did invaluable work. I am especially grateful to Steve Donohue for his extensive work hand-coding documents. Melissa Wu, Caitlin Foley, Sam Geloso, Paxton Williams, and Cecilia Wang also did terrific work. I received valuable comments on this project from Adam Cox, David Cole, Adam Chilton, Ben Grunwald, Jonathan Hafetz, Rebecca Ingbar, Jonathan P. Jackson, Andrew Kent, Anne Joseph O’Connell, Cian Murphy, David Pozen, Eric Posner, Daphna Renan, Daniel Richman, Stephen Schulhofer, and Matt Waxman. Workshop participants at King’s College London, Chicago-Kent College of Law, Columbia Law School, the University of Chicago Law School, and the 2015 Conference on Empirical Legal Studies all provided insightful comments. Finally, I am very grateful to Brian Ruocco and other editors at the University of Pennsylvania Law Review for their careful and painstaking work on this Article.
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