Dorsey partner Peter Hendrixson, who served as the firm's managing partner from 2000-2006, called for the restoration of habeas corpus rights to Guantanamo Bay detainees in a Star Tribune commentary. Hendrixson suggested that the decision of more than 500 attorneys, including lawyers from among the largest corporate law firms in the United States, to take pro bono clients at Guantanamo was aimed squarely at defending the fundamental American principles of due process and the rule of law.
Following U.S. government assertions that any individual it designated an "enemy combatant" could be incarcerated indefinitely without charge, lawyers representing Guantanamo Bay detainees filed petitions for habeas corpus, a legal remedy enshrined in the U.S. Constitution. At its core, habeas requires a government seeking to deprive someone of freedom to provide evidence to a court demonstrating it has a legitimate basis to do so. In response, Congress passed the Military Commissions Act, which mandated the courts dismiss all detainee habeas cases in favor of an alternative military tribunal process. Under these rules, detainees were forbidden to have lawyers or see evidence, while having their challenges limited to the issue of whether the tribunals followed their own rules in finding the detainees to be "enemy combatants."
Hendrixson called for a repeal of this denial of habeas corpus in the Military Commissions Act, and the restoration of the principle that government should not imprison people – potentially forever – without offering evidence in a court of law.
"Restore habeas rights at Guantanamo: Lawyers defending the detainees are also defending a vital principle" was published by the Star Tribune, July 3, 2007.