In January 2009, a week before President Obama was sworn in, Debevoise & Plimpton counsel Jennifer Cowan was visiting her clients detained at Guantánamo when she thought to herself, “I have to remember everything about this place, because it’s not going to be here soon.”
She was wrong: A decade since she first took five cases on, Cowan, now the firm’s pro bono counsel, still represents two Yemeni detainees, one cleared for transfer in 2010 and the other recommended for continued detention without charge. Her team has continued to win individual habeas cases, despite court rollbacks of detainee rights.
