Amicus is sponsored by HBO and the new documentary series The Jinks, the Life and Deaths of Robert Durst.

Four decades, three murders, and one very rich man who refused to speak until now.

The Jinks airs Sundays at 8, only on HBO.

Hi, and welcome to Amicus, Slate's podcast about the Supreme Court and the law. I'm Dahlia Lithwick,

Slate Supreme Court correspondent, and this week we thought we'd talk about something we just don't talk

about anymore in Supreme Court circles, Guantanamo Bay. Now, there was a time when Supreme Court

watchers talked about nothing but Guantanamo Bay.

And here's where I give you a Latin overdose, but this is my first amicus meaaculpa,

where I tell you that I used to write about Gitmo almost every week, and I don't write about it annually anymore.

So let's back up and figure out how that happened. In the Bush era, the U.S. Supreme Court heard at least six decisions that had to do with

Gitmo, including the 2006 case, Hamdan v. Rumsfeld, where the court ruled that the military

commissions that had been set up at Guantanamo Bay violated the Geneva Conventions, and including

the blockbuster 2008 case, Bumedian v. Bush, where the Supreme Court decided

that detainees at Guantanamo were entitled to protections of the U.S. Constitution.

Right after Bumidyan was decided, Barack Obama took office, and one of the first things he did was vowed a close Gitmo.

But that never happened, And since that 2008 decision,

the Supreme Court has been nearly silent on all things Guantanamo declining to hear case after

case that comes up from the courts of appeals. This past week, the court batted away to more

challenges to American treatment of detainees at Guantanamo, one involving the publication

of photos, the other involving a damages suit, and both involving actual claims of torture

at the base. In doing so, the court continued a longstanding trend of letting stand lower court

decisions that tend to side with the government. Our first guest today, Jonathan Hafeitz, has actually

...