Abu Ghraib and the Perversion of the Political Question Doctrine
I’ve written extensively about the important and complex legal questions raised by state-law tort suits against private military contractors, many of which have arisen in the context of suits by victims of torture at Abu Ghraib. It’s against that backdrop that I was disappointed to read yesterday’s…district court decision in al-Shimari v. CACI Premier Technology, Inc., which, on second remand from the Fourth Circuit, relied upon the political question doctrine to dismiss Abu Ghraib victims’ claims against the contractors allegedly responsible for their abuse. As I explain in the post that follows, there are two…flaws in Judge Gerald Bruce Lee’s opinion...[O]ne of those flaws is…the result of the Fourth Circuit’s expansive approach to the political question doctrine in military contractor cases…