NEW YORK — President-elect Barack Obama's promise to close the U.S. detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, will go a long way toward ending one of the most shameful episodes in U.S. legal history.
An effective closure, however, calls for reflection on some lessons to be drawn from this sad chapter of our constitutional history and for action by new administration on those lessons.
In October 2006, President George W. Bush signed the Military Commissions Act, whose proclaimed objective was "to authorize trial by military commission for violations of the law of war, and for other purposes."