Jerry Nadler

This debate has been dominated by a great deal of fear-mongering.

We need to be sure that, however we handle these cases, we do not conduct kangaroo courts.

This hearing of the Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights and Civil Liberties will come to order, with the agreement of the minority.

The question is a majority of total seats or a majority of Members living.

So our current system since the Civil War is unconstitutional.

The Nation runs the risk in a national crisis of those proportions of turning into a dictatorship.

I am especially concerned that a House of Representatives, well short of the majority of its 435 seats, might wield the war power or the power of the purse without legitimacy.

I hope to hear from today's witnesses about some of these important issues.

If we knowingly fail to act, or if we act by passing symbolic but ineffective and unconstitutional measures, we will have left the nation in peril and failed in our responsibilities.

We cannot wait until a crisis to find out whether we are adequately prepared for a catastrophe.

Are we giving it that process, or are current processes adequate to that?

What process is necessary to determine whether someone is or is not, in fact, a combatant?

The Supreme Court has never authorized a statute of that nature, and I think would be contrary to due process and most of the values that the United States stands for.

I don't believe it does, because I believe that detention on the basis of dangerousness alone is unconstitutional.

The President does not have the authority to detain people on the basis of dangerousness.

In other words, we're going to divide the prisoners into different classifications.

I do not believe that detention purely on the basis of some assessment of dangerous is lawful under any law.

I would point out that the United States Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit in 2008 said, with regard to the Uyghurs, or with regard to one of them at least, quote. 'It is undisputed that petitioner is not a…

The gentleman will suspend. If the gentleman wants to comment, I will grant him a minute to comment.

I think that view of the applicability of the Constitution does not survive the Boumediene decision.

One question which arises immediately in view of the apparent Administration position, as stated yesterday by Department of Defense general counsel Jeh Johnson that we can hold indefinitely even people acquitted in the military tribunal…

Today the Subcommittee examines the military commission system and, more importantly, how we as a Nation can work together productively to clean up the terrible legacy of the Bush administration's detention policies in a manner that…

I think the purpose of this hearing is, regardless of the position of any Administration, to figure out what is right, not who is right.

The legislation goes exactly in the wrong direction, so much so that even President Obama, Vice President Biden, and Secretary of State Clinton are running away from it.

This issue is perhaps the most important issue, in my judgment, this Committee will face.