"a passionate defense of the Bill of Rights."Publishers Weekly

"This book addresses an important and emotional national issue, and if we cannot even debate it, then the
Constitution is dead. Strongly recommended."Library Journal

Here is presented a forgotten episode of WWII, the Supreme Court case it sparked, and the precedent it set
for secret military tribunals in Guantanamo Bay.

In 1942, eight Nazi saboteurs were caught on American beaches after one turned the others in. The execution
of the saboteurs was challenged in court but eventually upheld in the Supreme Court's ruling in Ex parte
Quirina decision that has frequently been cited by the George W. Bush administration in support of its
declared power to hold "enemy combatants" and try them by military commission. This use of Ex parte
Quirin is clearly on the mind of O'Donnell, a former Supreme Court law clerk, in his narrative of the case,
which argues that we should be cautious in applying it as precedence because the process by which it was
decided by the Supreme Court was illegitimate.

Pierce O'Donnell has been named one of the "100 Most Influential Lawyers in America" by the National Law Journal and is co-author of the bestselling Fatal Subtraction. He lives in Montecito, California.

Raymond Todd is an actor-director in the theater, a poet, a jazz trombonist, and a documentary filmmaker who lives in New York.