Solving the Due Process Problem with Military Commissions

Abstract

This Comment's principal goal is to explore the interplay between two adjudicatory bodies created within the Department of Defense in recent years: military commissions and combatant status review tribunals (CSRTs). A plethora of law review articles have dealt with military commissions, and the CSRTs have been covered at length in the press. There has been almost no effort, however, to analyze how the two institutions fit together or how the lessons of one could be used to solve the potential constitutional problems of the other. This Comment seeks to fill that gap. In particular, it argues that there is a serious constitutional flaw in the military commissions' procedure for establishing personal jurisdiction and that, in an ironic twist, this flaw can be mended through a modest broadening of the scope of the CSRTs' fact-finding powers.