FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
March 16, 2005

CONTACT: Mark Kende, (515) 271-3354, mark.kende@drake.edu
Lisa Lacher, (515) 271-3119, lisa.lacher@drake.edu

ATTORNEY FOR ENEMY COMBATANTS TO SPEAK AT DRAKE SYMPOSIUM

Frank Dunham took on the Bush Administration and won. This gives the federal public defender for the Eastern District of Virginia a unique perspective regarding the war on terror. He will bring that perspective to Drake Law School on Saturday, April 9, when he participates in the Drake Constitutional Law Center Symposium on "Constitutionalism and the War on Terror."

Several nationally known scholars will also participate. The event will be from 8:45 a.m. to 1 p.m. in Cartwright Hall, 27th Street and Carpenter Avenue. This symposium is the first in the country to examine both the domestic and foreign implications for constitutionalism of the war on terror.

Dunham was the attorney for Yaser Hamdi — one of the individuals President Bush designated as an enemy combatant. Hamdi is an American citizen who was captured with Taliban forces in Afghanistan. Dunham has also served as shadow counsel for Zacarias Moussaoui, an alleged Sept. 11 co-conspirator who has represented himself in court proceedings. As an enemy combatant, however, Hamdi was not allowed access to a court, even to challenge the correctness of the combatant classification. This meant that initially he was held in detention, interrogated repeatedly, and yet never charged with a crime nor allowed a lawyer by the Bush Administration.

Eventually, at the urging of Dunham and others, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Hamdi v. Rumsfeld that the Bush Administration policy towards enemy combatants was unconstitutional. The court held that Hamdi had a constitutional right to "receive notice of the factual basis for his classification, and a fair opportunity to rebut the Government's factual assertions before a neutral decision-maker." Following the decision, the U.S. government released Hamdi with certain conditions and allowed him to join his father in Saudi Arabia. At the symposium, Dunham will discuss his experiences in a presentation titled "Where Hamdi Meets Moussaoui in the War on Terror."

Dunham's presentation will be part of the symposium's first panel, which will discuss "The Enemy Combatant Cases." The speaker who follows Dunham will likely take a very different view. Douglas Kmiec is the Caruso Family Chair and Professor of Constitutional Law at Pepperdine University School of Law. He is also a former high-ranking legal official in the Reagan and Bush I Administrations. His talk is titled "Observing the Separation of Powers — The President's War Power Necessarily Remains 'The Power to Wage War Successfully.'" He will argue that the Supreme Court's decision in Hamdi did not change the fact that the judiciary should be very respectful of the president's authority to fight the war on terror aggressively and with all available tools.

The last speaker on this panel is Mark Drumbl, a prominent international law scholar from Washington and Lee University Law School. Professor Drumbl will examine whether the U.S. government's actions in holding detainees at Guantanamo, Cuba, meet international legal standards.

Besides the domestic war on terror, the post Sept. 11 world has witnessed constitutional revisions in nations such as Iraq, Afghanistan, and even Russia. The United States has played a particularly influential role in the "reconstruction" of Iraq and Afghanistan as well as in the constitutional processes there. This involvement raises important questions such as whether their charters should be secular or Islamic, and whether their charters can be legitimate given the American role. The symposium's second panel will address these topics. The panel is titled "Constitutionalism in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Other Emerging Nations."

The initial speaker, Professor Nathan Brown, posted the first English translation of the Interim Iraqi Constitution on his Web site. Brown will discuss "Constitutionalism, Authoritarianism, and Imperialism in Iraq." He works at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace where he is on leave from his position as Director of Middle Eastern Studies at George Washington University.

The next speaker will be Said Arjomand, one of the nation's leading experts on Islamic constitutionalism. America's ability to understand that tradition may well be crucial to the success of this nation's foreign policy. Professor Arjomand will talk on "Constitutional Developments in Afghanistan: A Comparative and Historical Perspective." He is the inaugural Crane Fellow and Visiting Professor of Public Affairs at Princeton University.

The final speaker, Professor Kim Lane Scheppele from the University of Pennsylvania Law School, has been a pioneer in the field of comparative constitutional law. Professor Scheppele's presentation is titled "We Forgot About Ditches: Russia's Constitutional Peregrinations." She will examine the practical difficulties that often get in the way of Russia's movements towards constitutional government.

The public is welcome to attend the symposium. The fee is $30 but the event is free for students. All of the proceedings will be published at a later date in the Drake Law Review. Issues of the review may be purchased in advance for $10. For information about registration, contact Ginnie Nevins at (515) 271-2988 or e-mail ginnie.nevins@drake.edu.

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