Habeas Corpus: The Right to Challenge Detention

On 23 October 2026 the full US Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit ruled 10–7 that the Constitution does not entitle certain detained immigrants to a bond hearing; the cases reached it as petitions for a writ of habeas corpus, and the Supreme Court has agreed to review the detention law itself. This film explains the old legal tool at the centre of such cases: what habeas corpus means; its roots in Magna Carta and England’s Habeas Corpus Act of 1679; the 1772 case that freed James Somerset; when governments have suspended it, from Britain in 1794 to Lincoln in 1861; the Guantánamo ruling of 2008; how human-rights treaties, Latin America’s amparo and Thailand’s criminal procedure code carry the same idea; and what each side argues in the case now before the courts.

Produce the body

Who checks the jailer?

Produce the body

A judge’s order to the jailer.

English roots

Eight hundred years of “not without law”.

Switched off

In emergencies, governments have paused the writ.

Around the world

A right written into treaties and codes.

The case now

Each side, in its own words.

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