While many civil liberties activists are celebrating Barack Obama’s order to close Guantanamo Bay, the implications of closing the detention center are actually fairly limited, according to two Law School professors at a discussion hosted by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) Thursday night.

Both panelists, Eric Posner and Mary Anne Franks, agreed that the closing of the detention center has greater significance for public image and symbolic meaning than for actual United States policy. “The symbolic issue is laden with a lot of significance that it probably doesn’t deserve… people don’t understand that nothing has changed,” Franks said. “Where the real debate should lie is why we are picking up these people and calling them enemy soldiers.”

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