This morning the Supreme Court of the United States issued a remarkable order in Boumediene v. Bush, No. 06-1195, a pro bono case in which WilmerHale represents six Bosnian-Algerian men who have been imprisoned without charge at Guantanamo Bay since January 2002. The Supreme Court previously had denied certiorari on April 2, and we petitioned for rehearing. On the last day of its Term, the Court granted our petition for rehearing, vacated its prior order, and granted certiorari. The case will be briefed this summer and argued this fall.

The case challenges as unconstitutional a 2006 law that purported to strip federal court jurisdiction over habeas corpus petitions from Guantanamo Bay prisoners. The case also asks the Court to determine that WilmerHale's clients' habeas petitions demonstrate that their detention is unlawful and that they are entitled to release or, at the very least, a hearing on the merits.

The Supreme Court's decision to rehear a denial of certiorari is extremely rare—it has happened only a few times in the last one hundred years. This is a major positive development in a case that presents the Court with the opportunity to address some of the most important constitutional issues of our time.

The firm's Guantanamo representation began in 2004 and is a firm-wide effort that includes numerous lawyers in several of our US and European offices. The US litigation team includes Stephen Oleskey, Rob Kirsch, Seth Waxman, Paul Wolfson, Doug Curtis, Mark Fleming, Joseph Mueller, Pratik Shah, Lauren Brunswick, Paul Winke, Lynne Campbell Soutter, Julian Davis Mortenson and Jeffrey Gleason.

To view the WilmerHale website with detailed information about the Boumediene v. Bush case, click here.