Attorney General Michael B. Mukasey on Monday asked Congress to pass legislation this year to codify the ground rules for habeas corpus challenges by detainees held at the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

The Supreme Court ruled 5-4 last month in Boumediene v. Bush that the detainees have a constitutional right to mount legal challenges to their confinement.

In a speech at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington, Mukasey said that decision, which the court handed down without specifying the parameters of such challenges, creates “a serious risk of inconsistent rulings and considerable uncertainty” in the legal system.

The attorney general, himself a former federal judge, said the prospective legislation should specify that judges cannot order the government to bring a detainee into the United States or release them into this country.

Mukasey said the bill should provide procedures for protecting sensitive national security information and should bar habeas proceedings from delaying military commission trials for detainees, the first of which began today at Guantanamo Bay.

Mukasey said the bill should explicitly state that the United States remains in armed conflict with the Taliban and al Qaeda and can detain enemy combatants for the duration of the conflict. He said the bill also should state that habeas proceedings should be handled by the federal court in Washington.