Duke University law professor Madeline Morris praised the Supreme Court's June 12 ruling, in Boumediene v. Bush, that Guantanamo detainees have the right to challenge their detentions in U.S. federal court -- "a real American court."

"The court found that the national security of the United States would not be undermined or unduly threatened by affording the detainees the right to habeas corpus," said Morris, an expert in public international law and the law of war. "Indeed, the court recognized that security ‘subsists, too' in the safeguards that we enjoy to ensure freedom from arbitrary detention by the government."

Morris served as a consultant on the Supreme Court brief for the petitioner, detainee Lakhdar Boumediene, while also serving as chief counsel to the Office of the Chief Defense Counsel for Military Commissions, U.S. Department of Defense. She directs Duke Law School's Guantanamo Defense Clinic.

"This will give us access to U.S. federal courts and the law and procedures established for those courts over 200 years. We will have prompt and meaningful review of all of the detentions at Guantanamo as well as the criminal trials before the military commissions there," said Morris.