WJohn D. Altenburg Jr. is a lawyer for the U.S. Army and a retired Major General. In December 2003, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld named Altenburg as the appointing authority for military commissions covering detainees at Guantanamo. He resigned, effective November 10, 2006.
WColonel Gary D. Brown is an American lawyer and former officer in the United States Air Force.
WErwin Chemerinsky is a modern liberal American legal scholar known for his studies of United States constitutional law and federal civil procedure. He served as the founding dean of the University of California, Irvine School of Law from 2008 to 2017, and is currently the dean of the University of California, Berkeley, School of Law.
WSusan J. Crawford is a US lawyer, who was appointed the Convening Authority for the Guantanamo military commissions, on February 7, 2007. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates appointed Crawford to replace John D. Altenburg.
WSteven H. David is the 106th Justice of the Indiana Supreme Court. David previously served as a lawyer and military officer. He retired from the United States Army Reserve in September 2010 with the rank of colonel.
WMatthew Mark Diaz is a former active-duty Lieutenant Commander (LCDR) and Judge Advocate General's Corps (JAGC) officer in the United States Navy. In mid-to-late 2004, Diaz served a six-month tour of duty in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba as deputy director of the detention center's legal office. Early in 2005 as LCDR Diaz was concluding his tour, he sent an anonymous greeting card to The Center for Constitutional Rights, a New York civil liberties and human rights group. The card contained the names of the detainees held at the Guantanamo Bay detention camp. In July 2006, the United States government formally charged Diaz in a military court with five criminal counts related to the sending of these names, the most serious being that he intended to harm national security or advantage a foreign nation, a violation of the Espionage Act. In May 2007, he was convicted by a seven-member jury of military officers on 4 of 5 counts. He served a 6-month prison sentence and was dismissed from the military.
WDennis Edney is a Canadian defence lawyer based in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. Originally from Dundee, Scotland, he is noted for his involvement in high-profile cases, including Brian Mills, R. v. Trang, as defence attorney for Abdullah and Omar Khadr, who were captured in the War on Terror, for Fahim Ahmad, and for representing the entire Khadr family. He also represented Canadian Abdulrahman El Bahnasawy charged in the US with plotting to carry out mass shootings of civilians at concerts, to bomb New York Times Square, and to bomb the city's subway system.
WTina Monshipour Foster is an Iranian-American lawyer and director of the International Justice Network.
WDavid Frakt is an American lawyer, law professor, and officer in the United States Air Force Reserve.
WStephen D. Gill is an American lawyer, from Massachusetts, and a retired United States Naval Reserve officer.
WColonel Will A. Gunn is an American lawyer and former officer in the American Armed Forces. He was appointed by President Barack Obama to be the new general counsel for the United States Department of Veterans Affairs. He attended the United States Air Force Academy, graduating in 1980, and Harvard Law School, graduating in 1986. While at Harvard, he was elected President of the Harvard Legal Aid Bureau. In 1990 Gunn was a White House Fellow and Associate Director of Cabinet Affairs. Mr. Gunn also has a Masters of Laws degree in Environmental Law from the George Washington University School of Law and a Master of Science degree in National Resource Strategy from the Industrial College of the Armed Forces.
WBrigadier General Thomas Hemingway is an American military lawyer who has served as a legal advisor to the Office of Military Commissions. Thomas Hemingway was a distinguished graduate of the Air Force ROTC program, was commissioned as a second lieutenant in November 1962 after earning his undergraduate degree at Willamette University. Upon graduation, he took an educational delay and earned his doctor of jurisprudence in 1965 at Willamette University College of Law. Hemingway entered active service in November 1965. He has also been an associate professor of law at the United States Air Force Academy and a senior judge on the Air Force Court of Military Review. He is a current member of the state bar in Oregon and the District of Columbia, and has been admitted to practice before the U.S. Court of Federal Claims, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit and the Supreme Court of the United States. He retired from active service in October 1996. General Hemingway was recalled to active service in August 2003 to fill the position as Legal Adviser to the Convening Authority in the Department of Defense Office of Military Commissions, Washington, D.C. General. He was replaced by Thomas W. Hartmann in July 2007.
WSandra Hodgkinson is an American lawyer and officer in the United States Navy Reserve. She currently serves as senior vice president for strategic planning and chief of staff at DRS Technologies and Leonardo North America, headquartered in Arlington, Virginia.
WShayana D. Kadidal is an American lawyer and writer. Kadidal has worked at the Center for Constitutional Rights in New York City since 2001, and is senior managing attorney of the Guantánamo Global Justice Initiative there, coordinating legal representation for the captives held in extrajudicial detention in the United States' Guantanamo Bay detention camps, in Cuba. Previously a writer on patent, drug and obscenity law, since 2001 he has played a role in various notable human rights cases, including:
WNeal Kumar Katyal is an American lawyer and academic. He is a partner at Hogan Lovells and the Paul and Patricia Saunders Professor of National Security Law at Georgetown University Law Center. During the Obama administration, Katyal served as Acting Solicitor General of the United States from May 2010 until June 2011. Previously, Katyal served as an attorney in the Solicitor General's office, and as Principal Deputy Solicitor General in the U.S. Justice Department. He is currently a Partner of Chamath Palihapitiya Social+capital Partnership and a member of the board of Social Capital Ventures Inc.
WWendy Kelly is an American lawyer and officer in the United States Army Reserves. In 2004 Kelly was an Assistant United States Attorney. In 2005 Kelly was appointed the director of operations of the Office of Military Commissions, a job the Philadelphia Inquirer describes as "...the executive producer of America's forthcoming terrorism trials...". The Inquirer reports that part of her responsibilities include overseeing the construction of a complex where the Guantanamo military commissions would convene. The Inquirer also reported: "Back in Washington, in an unmarked, secure corner office near the Pentagon, Kelly helps draft terrorism-trial rules and reviews proposed formal charges against detainees, including top-secret evidence."
WWilliam "Bill" C. Kuebler was an American lawyer and a Commander in the United States Navy Judge Advocate General's Corps, assigned to the U.S. Navy Office of the Judge Advocate General, International and Operational Law Division. Kuebler was previously assigned to the Office of Military Commissions. Prior to the decision of the United States Supreme Court in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld, to overturn the then current version of the Guantanamo military commissions on constitutional grounds, Kuebler was detailed to defend Ghassan Abdullah al Sharbi. Al Sharbi had insisted on representing himself and Kuebler refused superior orders to act as his lawyer.
WRamzi bin al-Shibh is a Yemeni citizen being held by the U.S. as an enemy combatant detainee at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba. He is accused of being a "key facilitator for the September 11 attacks" in 2001 in the United States.
WThe Guantanamo military commissions are military tribunals authorized by presidential order, then by the Military Commissions Act of 2006, and currently by the Military Commissions Act of 2009 for prosecuting detainees held in the United States Guantanamo Bay detainment camps.
WBrian L. Mizer is a United States Navy JAG officer. He is from the State of Nebraska. He attended Creighton University in Omaha, Nebraska, for his undergraduate degree and Case Western Reserve University for his juris doctorate.
WDirk Padgett is an American lawyer and officer in the United States Navy Reserve's Judge Advocate corp. Padgett is notable for his appointment to serve as a prosecutor for a Guantanamo military commission.
WPrescott Prince is an American lawyer and officer in the United States Navy Reserve. Prince is notable for being assigned to represent Guantanamo captive Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.
WDavid H. Remes is an American lawyer.
WRebecca S. Snyder is an American appellate defense attorney in Washington DC. She is notable for her work, along with Lt. Cmdr. William Kuebler, as counsel for Omar Khadr, a detainee at Guantanamo Bay detention camp, charged with murder for the death of an American soldier during a skirmish in Afghanistan on July 27, 2002.
WNeal Sonnett is a former Assistant U.S. Attorney.
WClive Adrian Stafford Smith is a British attorney who specialises in the areas of civil rights and working against the death penalty in the United States of America. He worked to overturn death sentences for convicts, and helped found the not-for-profit Louisiana Capital Assistance Center in New Orleans. By 2002 this was the "largest capital defence organisation in the South." He was a founding board member of the Gulf Region Advocacy Center, based in Houston, Texas.
WCharles D. Swift is an American attorney and former career Navy officer, who retired in 2007 as a Lieutenant Commander in the Judge Advocate General's Corps. He is most noted for having served as defense counsel for Salim Ahmed Hamdan, a detainee from Yemen who was the first to be charged at Guantanamo Bay; Swift took his case to the US Supreme Court. In 2005 and June 2006, the National Law Journal recognized Swift as one of the top lawyers nationally because of his work on behalf of justice for the detainees.
WSeth Paul Waxman is an American lawyer who served as the 41st Solicitor General of the United States from 1997 to 2001. He then returned to private legal practice, and serves as the co-chairman of the appellate and Supreme Court litigation practice group at the law firm Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr.
WThomas B. Wilner is the managing partner of Shearman & Sterling's International Trade and Global Relations Practice. Wilner has also represented the high-profile human rights cases of a dozen Kuwaiti citizens detained in the United States naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.