
STAKING CLAIM
SOON AFTER SEPTEMBER 11, 2001, the George W. Bush administration issued several acts and orders authorizing the indefinite detention without charge of suspected terrorists and military trials with no civilian oversight of noncitizens. Like formally declared states of exception—the founding modern instance was Germany’s 1933 restriction of the individual and civil liberties guaranteed by the Weimar Constitution—such exceptional orders claim to protect democracy by suspending its laws, including, in this case, the cardinal principle of American justice: innocent until proven guilty. Subsequently,