Though it was not very well received, I made a comment in class today about the way in which the US has established the capacity to deem certain individuals stateless, effectively stripping them of their rights of citizenship and any corresponding legal protection. What I was referring to was the Military Commission Act of 2006, which enables the US to ascribe the title of 'unlawful enemy combatants' to people across the globe. By doing so, these individuals lose their personal rights instituted by the Geneva Convention, are accused, tried, and convicted solely by the US military, and, for all practical purposes, are rendered 'stateless'. Furthermore, this policy was continued into the present largely (though not entirely) unscathed by the Obama administration with the signing of the Military Commission Act of 2009. While the Supreme Court has ruled against this act because it is unconstitutional (Boumediene vs Bush), many within GITMO and other illegal international US prisons are still without any internationally recognized legal rights.
So to answer Anthony's question: yes, people can be stateless in the legal sense (i.e. deprived of their rights of citizenship and fair trial under their national constitutions), so long as the US government feels like they should be. Personally, I view this to be a rather significant issue in the discourse surrounding the expansion of US control and its rejection of internaltion law. Specifically, this is a very hot topic issue for those who support the liberal international relations theory (I do not, though I think this is still important). What do you all think?
