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The Supreme Court is expected to rule this week on a case that could determine the fate of the 10 detainees in Guantanamo who expect to be tried in a military tribunal.

Director of the Project on Criminal Justice Tim Lynch discusses

the myriad legal issues surrounding the situation in Guantanamo Bay.

We've heard so much about Guantanamo Bay and our policies there, the controversy surrounding it.

Can you help sort some of this out?

Sure. There are three sets of legal controversies that have arisen out of Guantanamo Bay.

The first set of issues I call detention issues, that is, are we holding the right people down

there?

There are some people who were fighting against our forces in Afghanistan and they were

taken prisoner and brought to Guantanamo Bay. We've had many wars in the past

where we've established POW camps and this is basically the same type of idea where foreign fighters are taken off of the field of battle and they're held in POW-style camps.

There are some people, though, who say that they were picked up by accident, that they don't belong there.

That's a detention issue.

The second set of issues that arise out of Guantanamo Bay concern treatment issues.

This is the controversy over whether our military personnel, the guards down

there, are possibly mistreating the prisoners who are down there, whether they're

down there properly, that they were fighting against our forces, or they were picked up by accident.

Whether or not the prisoners are being mistreated, possibly tortured, that's a treatment issue.

And finally, the third set of legal issues that arise out of Guantanamo Bay concern trial issues.

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