Benjamin Wittes (legal media background), Jack Goldsmith (legal academic) and Robert Chesney (legal academic) won't let you play with them; thereby curtailing your mud wrestling practice ?

Plan A: Why don't you and Polarbear kidnap them and take them out into the boonies for a condensed version of TBS ? I'm sure that in no time at all the two of you could knock off some of the polish and reduce them to more rough-edged versions of their present selves.

Plan B: your posting comments and links to their blog in this thread, would be most welcome.

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A lot of the BS in this area can be blamed on too many justices writing opinions. Back in 2004, SCOTUS decided Hamdi v Rumsfeld. That, of course, was a decision in result only with 4 separate views being offered.

First, the plurality opinion (4 justices):

Justice O'Connor wrote a plurality opinion representing the Court's judgment, which was joined by Chief Justice Rehnquist and Justices Breyer and Kennedy. O'Connor wrote that although Congress had expressly authorized the detention of unlawful combatants in its Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF) passed after 9/11, due process required that Hamdi have a meaningful opportunity to challenge his detention. However, Justice O'Connor used the three-prong test of Mathews v. Eldridge to limit the due process to be received. This required notice of the charges and an opportunity to be heard, though because of the burden upon the Executive of ongoing military conflict, normal procedural protections such as placing the burden of proof on the government or the ban on hearsay need not apply. O'Connor suggested the Department of Defense create fact-finding tribunals similar to the AR 190-8 to determine whether a detainee merited continued detention as an enemy combatant. The United States Department of Defense created Combatant Status Review Tribunals in response, modeling them after the AR 190-8. O'Connor did not write at length on Hamdi's right to an attorney, because by the time the Court rendered its decision, Hamdi had already been granted access to one. However, O'Connor did write that Hamdi "unquestionably has the right to access to counsel in connection with the proceedings on remand." The plurality held that judges need not be involved in reviewing these cases, rather only an impartial decision maker was required.
In retrospect, this solution looks pretty good - to me. At the least, it is logically consistent and could be implemented in practice with minimal adverse consequences to detention. In effect, this is a Common Article 3 (of the 1949 GCs) solution, where detention is the default remedy - military commissions and civilian courts are add-ons, which can be useful in certain cases.

Second, we have the concur-dissent opinion (2 justices):

Justice David Souter, joined by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, concurred with the plurality's judgment that due process protections must be available for Hamdi to challenge his status and detention, providing a majority for that part of the ruling. However, they dissented from the plurality's ruling that AUMF established Congressional authorization for the detention of unlawful combatants.
In effect, this opinion requires a law enforcement approach to the problem of detained TVNSAs (Transnational Violent Non-State Actors) - you can kill them under the AUMF and the Laws of War, but you can detain them only under the Rule of Law.

Third, we have the Let Him Go or Suspend Habeas dissent (2 justices):

Justice Antonin Scalia's dissent, joined by Justice John Paul Stevens, went the furthest in restricting the Executive power of detention. Scalia asserted that based on historical precedent, the government had only two options to detain Hamdi: either Congress must suspend the right to habeas corpus, or Hamdi must be tried under normal criminal law. Scalia wrote that the plurality, though well meaning, had no basis in law for trying to establish new procedures that would be applicable in a challenge to Hamdi's detention—it was only the job of the Court to declare it unconstitutional and order his release or proper arrest, rather than to invent an acceptable process for detention.
This was truly an Odd Couple since the result is pure law enforcement (which was Stevens' posiiton throughout). I suppose Scalia thought Congress would suspend habeas (it did) and Stevens thought it would not.

Fourth, we have the Unlimited Executive Power dissent (1 justice):

Justice Clarence Thomas was the only justice who sided entirely with the executive branch and the Fourth Circuit's ruling, based on his view of the security interests at stake and the President's broad war-making powers. Thomas wrote that the Court's rationale would also require due process rights for bombing targets: "Because a decision to bomb a particular target might extinguish life interests, the plurality’s analysis seems to require notice to potential targets." Thomas also wrote that Congress intended that the AUMF authorized such detentions.
In effect, John Yoo's constitutional views received only one vote.

The DC District and Circuit have tried to make some sense of the this hash and the hash in later SCOTUS cases. Meanwhile, the USG (and the two major political parties) have created their own hash made up of variant combinations of the Laws of War and the Rule of Law.

Regards

Mike