View source for Military Commissions Act of 2006

===Conduct of commissions===
David Hicks, Salim Ahmed Hamdan and Omar Khadr were the first three men to face charges before the Congressionally authorized military commissions.  Hicks arranged to plead guilty to his charges in a plea bargain in March of 2007.

On June 4th, 2007 Peter Brownback and Keith Allred, the two officers presiding over Khadr and Hamdan's military commissions threw out all the charges on jurisdictional grounds.  They ruled that since Khadr and Hamdan had only been determined to be "enemy combatants". and that the Military Commissions Act only authorized them to try "unlawful enemy combatants", they lacked the authority to try the two men.

The Department of Defense set up a court of appeal for the military commissions, and appealed their rulings.  The court of military appeal ruled that Brownback and Allred were wrong to dismiss the charges, that they themselves had the authority to determine that Khadr and Hamdan were '''"unlawful"''' combatants.

In October of 2007 the press learned that Khadr and Hamdam's Prosecution and Defense were communicating with the judges over e-mail over matters that would have been communicated on papers in a court of law.  This new information triggered criticism that the military commissions were not measuring up to the Bush Presidency's claims that they were open and transparent.