The U.S. Supreme Court recently completed its term for the year. As most of you are probably aware, the major cases involved the rights of prisoners detained as part of the War on Terror.

One of the cases, Hamdi v. Rumsfeld, involved an American citizen named Yaser Hamdi, whom the U.S. government was holding as an "enemy combatant." Two issues were at stake: whether Hamdi could be detained (perhaps indefinitely) without being charged with any crime, and whether he had the right to challenge his detention in court (and with assistance of counsel).

The Court's decision was what might be considered a "compromise verdict." The detentions themselves were permissible (having received the proper Congressional authorization), but the detainee had the right to a day in court to challenge the detention.

As noted in an excellent summary of the case by Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism:

"Amicus briefs [were] filed by former prisoners of war, experts on the law of war, and Fred Korematsu on behalf of Hamdi."

As with all entries on this website, there must be a University of Michigan '80s connection, and that connection is Fred Korematsu. Korematsu, as many of you know, brought an unsuccessful Supreme Court challenge 60 years ago to the internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II.

I had the pleasure of seeing Korematsu speak at the UM law school about the history and legal issues of his case. It was probably in 1988 or '89. I've found two documents on the web that allude to Korematsu speaking at UM. Based on contextual clues, the first document could very well be describing the same lecture I saw, whereas the second one appears to describe a later visit by Koretmatsu. There's obviously no reason why Korematsu couldn't have spoken at Michigan on multiple occasions.

As I will attempt to detail in future entries, the University of Michigan gets a lot of prominent scholars, politicians, and historical figures to speak on campus. The "intellectual nourishment" level is high.