Between the CIA’s “torture report,” a string of gruesome botched state executions and the federal government’s promise to fast-track the deportation of children to Central American countries in a state of undeclared war, 2014 was a hard year for the United States’ human rights record. But court decisions from the first few months of 2015 have reaffirmed the role U.S. courts can play in strengthening and enforcing human rights.
A recent military commission decision, for example, vacated David Hicks’ conviction for “material support for terrorism” that was secured with evidence obtained by torture and outside of the military commission’s jurisdiction, which is limited to war crimes.
