Supreme Court Agrees to Take Guantanamo Bay Cases: Wow -- the Supreme Court has granted cert on the D.C. Circuit's Guantanamo Bay cases, Boumediene and Al Odah. What's remarkable about this isn't that the Supreme Court agreed to hear them, but how: the Court denied cert at first back in April, with several Justices writing opinions in the cert denial, and then granted a petition for rehearing. This is extremely unusual, and it is probably a pretty good sign that a reversal is likely. My take on some the legal issues can be found in my recent Senate testimony, available here. This is what I said about the D.C. Circuit's decision that will be reviewed:

[T]he reasoning in that decision is in obvious tension with the Supreme Court's language in Rasul. In Boumediene, the D.C. Circuit concluded that Guantanamo Bay is part of Cuba, not the United States, and that application of the habeas statute to persons detained at the base would not be consistent with the historical reach of the writ of habeas corpus. Judge Randolph rejected the relevance of Rasul in a short footnote. See id. at 992 n.10. Although the Supreme Court denied certiorari in Boumediene for procedural reasons, it seems highly likely that the Court will agree to resolve this issue in a future case. Given that Judge Randolph's approach in Boumediene is in obvious tension with the language found in the majority and concurring opinions in Rasul, it seems likely that a majority of the Supreme Court will view the case differently than did the D.C. Circuit in Boumediene.

Here's my question: What are the chances that this grant will push the Bush Administration to shut down Gitmo?