How an Overachieving Law Professor Toppled the President's Terror Tribunals

Georgetown Law professor Neal Katyal had never argued before the Supreme Court, but in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld he literally took on George W. Bush, arguing that the military commissions the president established to try the Guantanamo Bay Naval Base detainees were illegal. The Court agreed. Some had called the case unwinnable. Others had tried to talk Katyal out of arguing it. "I enjoy figuring my way out of a maze," he says. "If somebody says we can't do x or y, I like figuring out a way to do x or y."

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