Abstract
I. INTRODUCTORY On May 8, 2002, Jose Padilla, an American citizen, was arrested under a material witness warrant by federal authorities in Chicago as he disembarked a flight from Pakistan. 1 Padilla's arrest was subsequently announced on June 10 by no less a personage than the Attorney General of the United States, who happened to be in Russia at the time. 2 Attorney General Ashcroft charged that Padilla was an al Qaeda operative, planning to set off a radioactive "dirty" bomb somewhere in the United States. 3 President Bush quickly signed an order designating him an "enemy combatant." 4 Padilla was imprisoned in New York. 5 When, on April 3, 2006, the Supreme Court of the United States denied certiorari in the case of Padilla v. Hanft (Padilla X), it effectively held that an American citizen can be incarcerated for three years, ten months and twenty five days without a hearing or trial. 6 It left unanswered the question of the right of the executive branch to declare an American citizen an enemy combatant and hold him without administrative or judicial review of any kind, but it acceded to the power. By this action, the Court capitulated to the administration's position that questions of status, when national security is involved, is outside the effective power of the courts. No person outside the executive branch has yet officially been made privy to the evidence incriminating Padilla, other than the selected morsels doled out by the executive branch. ...