“I remember studying Korematsu in law school and thinking, of course, that it could never happen again,” Lewis says, referring to the landmark case of Korematsu v. United States, in which the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the president’s right to force Japanese Americans into U.S. internment camps during World War II. “It became clear that [indefinite detention of foreigners by the U.S. government] was the legal issue of our time.”
On its face, the legal status of the detainees at Bagram, a U.S.- controlled air base leased from the government of Afghanistan, appears to be much like that of the prisoners at Guantánamo Bay, a U.S. military station leased from Cuba. One would expect the Bagram detainees to benefit from the legal arguments raised on behalf of the Guantánamo inmates, whose due process rights the Supreme Court has repeatedly affirmed, most recently in Boumediene v. Bush. But so far, Bagram detainees have not benefited from the precedents that now apply unequivocally to prisoners at Guantánamo Bay. Moreover, the Bagram detainees have failed to garner the same level of public attention and outrage–or the stampede of offers for pro bono representation from major commercial law firms [see related article, "Why Firms Say No"]. Foster says she’s asked several law firms for help, but so far none of them besides Baach Robinson have been willing to take on Bagram cases.
