Jonathan Mahler      ... journalist and author of The Challenge: Hamdan v. Rumsfeld and the Fight over Presidential Power.  In it, Mr. Mahler captures the drama that culminated in this crucial test of presidential power and the rule of law. He also wrote the highly regarded Ladies and Gentlemen, the Bronx is Burning, in which baseball brings 1977 New York City into sharp focus. He is a writer for The New York Times Magazine and lives in Brooklyn.

Audio Preview of Jonathan Mahler 1:45

When is a “thriller” most terrifying? When it’s real. Jonathan Mahler gives us the ultimate legal drama -- two improbable lawyers directly challenging the President and Commander in Chief of the United States of America on behalf of a wildly implausible “Everyman”... and winning.

“The incredible odyssey of these two lawyers and this Guantanamo detainee, Salim Hamdan, gives people a handle on all these enormously complicated legal issues and why they’re so important. And it can’t all be reduced to soundbites,” Mr. Mahler says.

He follows human stories. First, there’s Charles Swift, a rebellious U.S. Navy officer and trial lawyer, and Neal Katyal, a Georgetown Constitutional law professor whose father arrived in the U.S. from India with eight dollars to his name.

“They brought (Hamdan v. Rumsfeld) against the commander in chief during a time of war, got a hearing at the Supreme Court, and won.”

They didn’t do it alone. Others also risked career suicide defying post-9/11 hysteria -- distinguished military men, a small handful of valiant lawyers working pro bono, and law students, all intent on defending the rights of Salim Hamdan, who’s a stand-in for humanity and America’s most fundamental values in this supercharged story.

“(Charles Swift) says to Hamdan, ‘I've been sent here by my government. They want you to plead guilty.’ And Hamdan says, ‘To what?’ And Swift says, ‘Well, we don't have any charges yet.” So even Salim Hamdan, who’s from Yemen, has a fourth grade education and less understanding of the American judicial system than my four year old son, sort of understood. ‘Wait a second. Plead guilty when I don’t even know what for?’”

The legal issues were many and complex, but one need look no further than the Administration’s suspension of habeas corpus to understand what was at stake.

“Habeas corpus has been around since Magna Carta. That’s 1215. Habeas corpus is a Latin phrase that means ‘show me the body’. Basically, it compels the institution or individual who’s imprisoned someone to bring that person into court and say why (he or she) is being held. Charge them or release them. It's the only durable method to prevent indefinite, unjustified detention. When you think about the roots of this nation, the idea was to get away from that sort of monarchical government.”

Mr. Mahler chooses to be inspired by a reaffirmation of the strength of the nation’s Constitutional design, rather than terrified by his hair-raising tale -- America narrowly avoiding the tyranny implicit in Bush’s frontal attacks on Constitutional separation of powers, the Uniform Code of Military Justice, and the Geneva Convention.

“This country was designed in such a way that even when the Executive is overreaching to this unprecedented degree, violating his oath to uphold the Constitution, and Congress has basically run away with its tail between its legs, you have a couple of individuals who stand up and say, ‘This is wrong.’ And you have a Supreme Court that will say to the President during a time of war, ‘You know what? They’re right and you’re wrong.’

“But the courts are extraordinarily limited in what they can do. They can say, ‘It’s wrong, go back and fix it.’ But they can’t fix it themselves. Congress has to restore itself to the role that it was designed to play in our Constitutional government -- as a check against the Executive Branch.”