[JURIST] Lawyers for Guantanamo prisoners seeking to challenge their detentions in the US federal courts argued Monday before the US DC Circuit Court of Appeals [official website] that no further filings in their cases were necessary and that enough documentation had been provided for the appeals court to decide whether the challenges could be made. Following the US Supreme Court's decision [JURIST report] last week in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld declaring military commissions illegal, US Solicitor General Paul Clement [official profile] had asked the appeals court for permission to provide additional briefs on the Bush administration's understanding of the high court's ruling.

Granting such permission would in practice oblige the attorneys representing the detainees to reply, and they argued Monday that three rounds of briefs were enough, that requiring more briefs would delay the resolution of their clients' cases - and their detentions - even further, and that in any event the Supreme Court ruling was clear in establishing that pending lawsuits filed by detainees can proceed if they were brought prior to the passage of the Detainee Treatment Act [JURIST document], which Congress approved late last year to limit such lawsuits. AP has more.