As Barack Obama advanced towards the presidency during 2008, one of his campaign themes resonated with some force. Seven years after President Bush had called for Osama bin Laden’s capture, ‘dead or alive’, Obama promised a return to legal orthodoxies. Whereas Bush had interned alleged terrorists at Guantanamo Bay and other prisons, claiming novel powers to authorise military trials and ‘enhanced interrogation techniques’ (such as waterboarding), Obama would have no truck with such exigencies. ‘I have said repeatedly that I intend to close Guantanamo,’ he told a journalist on 16 November 2008, ‘and I will follow through on that.’

He hasn’t. Despite a review of all Guantanamo detainees and an undertaking to shut the camp within a year, its cells remain home to 171 people. And although Obama has ended the violent humiliation and interrogation of suspected terrorists, ordinary judicial service has not been resumed. The Justice Department has