Hundreds of aliens and two United States citizens have been detained by the country's military forces without criminal charges on the ground that they are unlawful enemy combatants in the War on Terror. The legality of these detentions was challenged in three separate cases. Taken together, these cases raised three issues: (1) Whether the executive branch has any authority to detain unlawful enemy combatants; (2) whether United States courts have jurisdiction to consider claims by aliens detained outside United States sovereign territory that they are not unlawful enemy combatants; (3) and what process, if any, must be afforded detainees to challenge their unlawful enemy combatant status. Resolution of these issues required the federal judiciary to confront the age-old problem of protecting national security while preserving individual freedoms. When these two fundamental values clash, as they do in the detention trilogy, the judiciary must strike the proper balance.