Correction: November 27, 2001, Tuesday A front-page article on Sunday about the potential use of military tribunals and other special methods to investigate and prosecute terrorism misstated the given name of a former deputy solicitor general who supported the use of tribunals.
At first, Congress seemed almost stunned by the succession of executive pronouncements, especially the president's order that approved the use of tribunals to try suspected terrorists and Mr. Ashcroft's plan to question thousands of male Arab immigrants.
When President Bush issued the military order authorizing the use of tribunals to try non-American enemy combatants shortly after Sept. 11, critics wasted no time in denouncing them as kangaroo courts.
Against a backdrop of criticism over the use of tribunals, the Bush administration reached a compromise that would permit the trial of the terror suspect to be held in an open criminal court, but in a jurisdiction with a strong record of imposing the death penalty.
I applaud the federal court ruling that declared illegal the use of military tribunals at Guantánamo Bay.
Although officials declined to rule out the use of the tribunals for foreigners arrested on terrorism charges in the United States, they added that the tribunals would be used primarily against foreigners arrested abroad or captured on the battlefield.
"The use of military tribunals isn't necessarily unconstitutional," Laurence H. Tribe, a Harvard Law School professor, said.
Congress is clearly supportive of a limited use of military tribunals for trying the perpetrators of Sept. 11.
After months of protests against the use of military tribunals, a few hundred people arrested during demonstrations and put through military trials were released.
In 2006, I argued and won Hamdan v. Rumsfeld, a Supreme Court case that struck down President George W. Bush's use of military tribunals at Guantánamo Bay.
