An appellate court ruled earlier this year in Mr. Hamdi's case that a citizen captured on the battlefield could be held indefinitely as an enemy combatant.

Posner is also not ready to deny United States citizens and foreigners captured on United States soil all rights to a hearing, as the Bush administration has argued for.

Yasser Esam Hamdi, an American citizen captured in Afghanistan, has been held since April in a naval brig, without formal charges or access to a lawyer.

Government lawyers do not seem eager to give the justices a vehicle for elaboration, at least not one that involves Jose Padilla, an American citizen captured on American soil.

The results hint that there may potentially be a relationship between the economic success of a country and the information-seeking behavior of its citizens captured in big data.

In 2004, the Supreme Court ruled that the resolution encompassed the detention of an American citizen captured on a foreign battlefield in a conventional war.

Mr. Lindh, an American citizen captured in Afghanistan, ended up plea-bargaining for a 20-year prison term, avoiding a life sentence.

The president possessed no inherent constitutional authority as commander in chief to detain as enemy combatants American citizens captured on American soil, the court said in a 2-to-1 ruling.

The most significant case concerned the detention of Yaser Esam Hamdi, an American citizen captured in Afghanistan and then held without trial in the United States.

It said the force authorization allowed the detention of an American citizen captured on a foreign battlefield in a conventional war notwithstanding a specific law prohibiting detentions without an act of Congress.