“Amicus Curiae”: The Friend, the Enemy, and the Politics of Love

Abstract

Let me take as my point of departure a question of genre, one raised in the realm of jurisprudence by the amicus brief—that is, the brief of the amicus curiae, or friend of the court: one who is not a party to a case but holds a pressing interest in it. I was drawn to the genre, most immediately, by a reading of the amicus briefs filed in the case of Lakhdar Boumediene et al. v. George W. Bush, which came before the United States Supreme Court on 5 December 2007 and raised the question of whether the detainees held at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, possessed the habeas corpus rights guaranteed by the United States Constitution.