Washington, D.C., associate Carlos Ramos-Mrosovsky authored a guest column, "Judges Rightly Leave War in Military's Hands with Maqaleh v. Gates Ruling," which was published on May 25, 2010, on "The Legal Pulse," the blog of the Washington Legal Foundation.
Ramos-Mrosovsky highlighted Baker Hostetler's role as counsel to veterans of the U.S. military’s special operations community participating as amici curiae during the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit’s consideration of a case addressing whether non-U.S. citizens held as enemy combatants at a U.S. military facility in Afghanistan could bring habeas corpus claims to challenge their detentions in federal courts.
Represented by Baker Hostetler, the amici supported the Obama Administration’s position that to extend habeas corpus to enemy combatants held in Afghanistan would improperly allow courts to second-guess the military’s conduct of operations in the field. Drawing on the vast military experience of amici including the Special Forces Association and U.S. Army Ranger Association, the amicus brief filed by Baker Hostetler argued that a contrary decision would have created added dangers for U.S. troops who would have been forced to consider the admissibility of intelligence gathered in combat in civilian courts and run even greater risks as a result. Ramos-Mrosovsky notes that “[j]udging by the D.C. Circuit’s emphasis on the ‘practical obstacles’" entailed in extending habeas corpus to Bagram, "amici were right on target and probably influenced the court’s resolution of the appeal."
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