I want to talk today about the problematic role that U.S. courts have played in enforcing human rights when they are confronted with government-asserted national security interests. While it is true that Congress and the current administration have accepted as binding international humanitarian bars on torture and inhuman or degrading treatment toward prisoners, and our Supreme Court has in several significant decisions (Hamdi, Rasul, Hamdan, and Boumediene) extended habeas corpus rights to Guantanamo prisoners to challenge the lawful basis for their detention and has insisted that Geneva Convention Common Article III applies to the war on Al Qaeda terrorists, the story of on-the-ground enforcement by U.S. courts of human rights in cases where the government raises national security concerns in opposition to enforcement is far less encouraging. Harold Koh (and others) has written about the 3 I’s—Interaction, Interpretation, and Internalization—in global enforcement of human rights, citing examples like land mine regulation where influential actors from different countries arrive at consensus and then proceed to get that consensus adopted inside their own countries. To a degree, that process succeeded with American judges in cases like Roper (the ban on the death penalty for minors) and Lawrence (the ban on criminalizing consensual sex among same-sex partners). In Lawrence, Justice Kennedy said: ‘‘The right the petitioners seek in this case has been accepted as an integral part of human freedom in many other countries. There has been no showing that in this country the governmental interest in circumscribing personal choice is somehow more legitimate or urgent’’ here in the United States than in those other countries. Justice Scalia, of course, countered with: ‘‘[T]his court . . . should not impose foreign moods, fads or fashions on Americans.’’ Although the majorities in those cases cited foreign and international sources as supportive, and not controlling, they did cite them respectfully for their persuasive value. However, it must be acknowledged that changes on the Court since then suggest there may now be a majority for the Scalia view that foreign and international sources should not be considered at all. The follow-up record in the lower courts to Supreme Court decisions dealing with the tension between national security and human rights, and even several later actions of the Supreme Court itself after its initial four detainee decisions, are discouraging on the issue of human rights norms trumping security concerns. (1) Following the Court’s decision in Boumediene that Guantanamo inmates be accorded habeas corpus rights to challenge the basis for their detention, hundreds of petitions flowed into the federal district court in the District of Columbia (D.C. Circuit). In response to these petitions, the government insisted, and the courts initially concurred, that the detention decisions should follow international humanitarian law (IHL) (the law of war) on the issue