SCOTUS Grants Guantanamo Prisoners Habeas Corpus

beebee and other readers sent word that the US Supreme Court has, by a 5 to 4 majority, ruled that the Constitution applies at Guantanamo. Accused terrorists can now go to federal court to challenge their continued detention (the right to habeas corpus), meaning that civil judges will now have the power to check the government's designation of Gitmo detainees as enemy combatants. This should remedy one of the major issues Human Rights activists have with the detention center. However, Gitmo is unlikely to close any time soon. The NYTimes reporting on the SCOTUS decision goes into more detail on the vigor of the minority opinion. McClatchy reports the outrage the decision has caused on the right, with one senator calling for a Constitutional amendment "to blunt the effect of this decision."

About time...

[diewlasing (1126425)]

Sudden outbreak of common sense?

Sudden?

[AmazingRuss (555076)]

How long have those guys been rotting down there? 6 years?

Re:Sudden?

[pjt33 (739471)]

"Sudden" means that the change took place quickly, not that it wasn't delayed.

Re:Sudden?

[gregbot9000 (1293772)]

woo-hoo, Those detainees are going to be partying like it's 1679.

Even scarier...

[ehrichweiss (706417)]

What scares me more is that the ruling was 5-4 instead of unanimous.

The minority opinion

[goombah99 (560566)]

What scares me more is that the ruling was 5-4 instead of unanimous.

I too am puzzled by the logic of the Minority opinion given how the issue is described by the NY times. The issue is actually quite a narrow one.
1) Earier Supremes say it's okay for Bush to deny Habeous in US criminal courts so long as an alternative is provided that is substanially simmiar to the habeous right to contest incarceration.
2) congress provides an alternative tribunal system that fulfills this requirement

3) Said new tribunal turns around and refuses to hear any Habeous claims because it decrees the prisoners have no Habeous rights. (WILD!)

4) Today's court ruling reverses that saying they do have habeous rights.

The question then is Does it go back to the Kangaroo court or to a real crimminal court for hearing of habeous claims. I think this is the point of contention.

Also here's a link [slashdot.org] to a longer slashdot post that talks about this:

You want to be really scared?

[Weaselmancer (533834)]

Read the dissenting opinion.

Today the Court strikes down as inadequate the most generous set of procedural protections ever afforded aliens detained by this country as enemy combatants. The political branches crafted these procedures amidst an ongoing military conflict, after much careful investigation and thorough debate. The Court rejects them today out of hand, without bothering to say what due process rights the detainees possess, without explaining how the statute fails to vindicate those rights, and before a single petitioner has even attempted to avail himself of the law's operation. ... One cannot help but think, after surveying the modest practical results of the majority's ambitious opinion, that this decision is not really about the detainees at all, but about control of federal policy regarding enemy combatants.

The game of bait-and-switch that today's opinion plays upon the Nation's Commander in Chief will make the war harder on us. It will almost certainly cause more Americans to be killed. That consequence would be tolerable if necessary to preserve a time-honored legal principle vital to our constitutional Republic. But it is this Court's blatant abandonment of such a principle that produces the decision today...

Bolding mine. How would anyone know if they've tried to use the courts if they haven't had access to them in the first place? And saying that Habeas Corpus isn't a "time-honored legal principal"?

Amazing, isn't it?

Quotes taken from here. [dailykos.com]

Re:Sudden?

[DrLang21 (900992)]

FTA: "The court's ruling makes clear the legal rights given to al Qaida members today should exceed those provided to the Nazis during World War II," Graham said.

German POWs in WWII were treated very well by us as we followed the Geneva Convention almost to an extreme. They lived in large camps and weren't locked up in prison cells so long as they behaved.

Re:Sudden?

[mandie (69148)]

The plural of "anecdote" is not "data," but from what I've heard talking to elderly Germans who fought as Wehrmacht in WWII and got picked up by us (or their grandchildren), they were indeed pretty well-treated. They do not seem to be bitter about their time as POWs. Most importantly, once returned to Germany, they had no desire to take up arms against the occupying US forces, much less attack the US elsewhere - they just wanted to get on with their lives.

Re:Sudden?

[david.given (6740)]

There was an Italian prisoner of war camp in the Orkney Islands, north of Scotland; a lot of the prisoners of war decided not to go back to Italy after the war and stayed there, marrying locals.

The place is worth a visit; among other things, the prisoners painted frescoes on the ceiling of the Nissen Hut they were using as a chapel. It's gorgeous, and still an active church.

Re:Sudden?

[orielbean (936271)]

The other very important piece to securing a post-war peace was the Marshall Plan, designed to rebuild the shattered countries. The reason that the Weimar government in Germany was so screwed up and produced quadrulple-digit inflation was due to the fact that the winner countries in WWI forced Germany to make a lot of expensive reparations, and never helped them rebuild their industry or economy. That bad government in turn allowed Hitler his rise to power with the disaffected citizens and workers - and subsequent horror of the second war. It took a lot of effort and money to make the Marshall Plan work, but look at the Axis countries 70 years later - they are some of our strongest allies now!

Re:Sudden?

[Martin Blank (154261)]

I have read that Allied prisoners in Europe (except for Soviet POWs) were generally treated well, though perhaps not so well as Axis prisoners were treated. There was a strong reason for this reciprocity: many of one's own were held by the other side, and the situation meant that abuse of prisoners risked a great deal for one's own under guard by the enemy.

There was also a much smaller culture clash in Europe. It was, essentially, Europe or Europe-spawned nations fighting each other. Languages and national quirks aside, the most values of the nations involved were (and are) pretty similar.

I haven't had a chance to read the decision yet, so I don't want to bank on nuances that may be present and which some reporters have mentioned. However, if this does indeed close the loophole that has been present for the last several years, it will make me feel a lot better about how evenly the Constitution is applied to US facilities not on US soil. It's my feeling -- and I hope the majority feels the same way -- that effective US soil such as permanent bases and US-government-owned ships at sea should be places where the Constitution applies in full.

Re:Sudden?

[Lemmy Caution (8378)]

Perhaps you think that even a majority of the detainees in Guantanamo were picked up on the field of battle. Most were not, but were taken into US custody as a result of a bounty program for informers. The problems with such an approach should be obvious.

Re:Sudden?

[TheGavster (774657)]

Just because someone is a sadistic dil-weed doesn't mean that sadistic dil-weedhood is conditionally ok. Seems kinda hypocritical to give up our nation's ideals of justice in defense of those same ideals.

Re:Sudden?

[pluther (647209)]

True, but there is a big difference from catching a German Speaking Nazi and holding him until the war is over, and catching someone who might or might not be a terrorist and you having to figure out if they are friend or foe.

True. In the case of the Nazi, you know he's an enemy.

With many of those in Guantanamo, we didn't have that assurance before we put them there.

(Though, to be fair, we can probably pretty much count on it now.)

Re:Sudden?

[DrLang21 (900992)]

So the solution is, if we know they are our enemy, we treat them well (Germans in WWII), but if we arn't sure, we treat them like crap until we are?

Hardly an outbreak of common sense...

[cutecub (136606)]

A 5-4 decision means that the somewhat-sane members of the court outnumbered the completely-crazy members of the court by One Single Vote. We've got ourselves a Supreme Court that's divided on the meaning of some of the most fundamental aspects American law. This doesn't bode well for the next 30 years.

-Sean

Re:Hardly an outbreak of common sense...

[terrymr (316118)]

Quite ... I was absolutely stunned by the statement of Scalia that "The saddest part" was that the government would have to prove the need to hold each and every person. Has this guy even read the constitution he's sworn to uphold ??

Re: Extend welfare and voting rights too!

[Rycross (836649)]

There's a difference between citizen's rights (voting, welfare) and human rights which are universally applicable (free speech, etc). My personal belief is that not being imprisoned without just cause, and being able to challenge your imprisonment is in the latter set.

I'm at a loss as to how anyone can be upset at this decision. Its not like we're turning known terrorists out onto American streets. We're just saying that the people being detained have a right to challenge their detainment.

Re: Extend welfare and voting rights too!

[Rycross (836649)]

How do we know that they're the government's enemies? You're assuming that because they're there they deserve to be there. Me, I'd kinda like there to be, you know, evidence... that whole pesky due-process thing. I'd rather not be wasting government money and what little good-will we have left in the world holding people when we can't even reasonably say that they are a threat.

Here's a little thought experiment. The British (or Germans, or Japanese, ...) sieze an American. They say that for, national security reasons, they can't reveal why they are imprisoning him, or provide any evidence that this person deserved to be imprisoned. We only have their word. Is that ok? Thats what we're doing right now, and it needs to stop.

Re: Extend welfare and voting rights too!

[MrHanky (141717)]

The constitution isn't "granted" to non-citizens, it limits what the government can do to people. Which is a good thing, since then the government can't push the constitution aside by inventing new ways to revoke citizenships.

Re: Extend welfare and voting rights too!

[bigstrat2003 (1058574)]

Actually, it's more than that. It isn't a restriction on an otherwise-unlimited government, it's a grant of powers to an otherwise-powerless government.

Re: Extend welfare and voting rights too!

[_KiTA_ (241027)]

The constitution isn't "granted" to non-citizens, it limits what the government can do to people. Which is a good thing, since then the government can't push the constitution aside by inventing new ways to revoke citizenships.

Tell that to John Walker Lindh [wikipedia.org] and Jose Padilla [wikipedia.org], two American citizens who had their rights as both American citizens and human beings revoked because, well, the Bush Administration thought they were inconvenient.

The idea of not torturing someone until they confess -- quaint, really. He wants a fair trial? Oh, how cute. Thinks we're being unjust in keeping him in jail for years without charging him with anything? Aww, poor baby.

History will judge this administration, and us for not speaking out against it. And history will not be kind.

Re: Extend welfare and voting rights too!

[MightyMartian (840721)]

It's been established for a helluva long time that the Constitution does apply to foreigners on American soil. The police are still bound by due process, even if the suspect is an Englishman or from North Korea. The Gitmo trick (and the unknown number of secret prisons) was to claim that the foreign detainees were not on American soil, so any Constitutional obligation was removed. SCOTUS has dispensed with that pathetic notion and finally stated that where there's smoke there's fire; in other words, if a detention center on foreign soil is still run by the United States, the detainees should have the same right to habeus corpus as if they were within US borders. This is a victory for liberty.

stupid, confusing war on terror...

[bsDaemon (87307)]

Ok -- so we capture people on the battle field in Afghanistan and take them prisoner. Bush &co. don't want to classify them as "prisoners of war," because then they'd get Geneva Convention protection.

So, reaching back to FDR, they pull this "enemy combatant" thing out of their ass and say that now they can do whatever they want. Now, the Supreme Court is saying that "enemy combatants" are somehow criminals who are entitled to the protections of the civilian legal system.

If they were just reclassified as POWs, then they could be held until the war is over -- which, like the war on drugs, it never will be. So, they could be held forever, without any need for a trial - because you can't be tried for "murder" or "conspiring to murder Americans" if you are a soldier in time of war.

But yet, Bush &co still aren't going to want to reclassify them as POWs.

Jeebus. I seriously can't wait to get a new administration that will just settle on what the status of these prisoners is so that we don't have to hear about this crap anymore. Want to keep them forever? Call them POWs. Want to try them to make some sort of b.s. point like Nuremberg? Then they get the protection of a court system.

I'm really not seeing how they can have it both ways, but then again I'm not a lawyer -- just a human (usually an exclusive option).

Re:stupid, confusing war on terror...

[edheler (715806)]

Is it possible to have POW's without a congressionally declared war?

Re:stupid, confusing war on terror...

[Rycross (836649)]

I'd be fine with calling them POWs if we actually declared a war. Congress authorized the use of our military in Afghanistan and Iraq but we are not technically at war with anyone, and thus there's no way of knowing when the "war" ends. I vehemently oppose the idea that we should imprison people as war prisoners when there is no way of knowing when that war is over (and thus forcing us to imprison them indefinitely).

Re:stupid, confusing war on terror...

[darkmeridian (119044)]

The Bush Administration's definition of "enemy combatant" was based on Ex Parte Quirin, which dealt with the German sabeteurs who landed on Long Island, New York [damninteresting.com] during World War II. The Quirin case underscores why we need courts even for enemy combatants.

You see, George John Dasch was one of the enemy sabeteurs, but he actually hated the Nazis. He took this to be a chance to defect to the US. Ernst Peter Burger, another one of the sabeteuers, was like-minded. The two of them tried very hard to turn themselves in, but were stopped by an unbelieving FBI. Dasch was only able to turn himself in when he threw $84,000 in mission funds onto the desk of a FBI agent. Under interrogation, he revealed the whole Nazi plan.

But the FBI claimed it was their great work that lead to the capture of the Germans. All the Germans were placed on trial before a military tribunal. The original verdict was a recommendation of death, even for the man who turned the group in. Burger's sentence was commutted to life, and Dasch was sentenced to 30 years in prison. It was only after W.W.II ended that the truth came out, and they were released and deported to Germany.

Without trial, the truth will never go out. As a democratic society, we have to dedicate ourselves to protect civil rights for all.

More good reading on the decision

[jamie (78724)]

Recommended reading that didn't make it into this story's writeup:

Glenn Greenwald, Supreme Court restores habeas corpus [salon.com]:

In a major rebuke to the Bush administration's theories of presidential power -- and in an equally stinging rebuke to the bipartisan political class which has supported the Bush detention policies -- the U.S. Supreme Court today, in a 5-4 decision (.pdf), declared Section 7 of the Military Commissions Act of 2006 unconstitutional. The Court struck down that section of the MCA because it purported to abolish the writ of habeas corpus...

Glenn Greenwald, Conservative vs. authoritarianism [salon.com]:

To our country's pseudo-tough-guy "conservatives," the very idea of merely requiring the Government to prove the guilt of the people it wants to imprison for life or execute is so intolerable, so offensive, that they want instead to release them all -- including detainees who are indisputably innocent -- onto a battlefield so that they can be slaughtered by our planes with no trial at all. [...]

The question I put to him again and again was one that he simply couldn't answer: how and why would any American object to the mere requirement that our Government prove that someone is guilty before we imprison them indefinitely or execute them?

The decision itself [scotusblog.com], with my favorite passage being:

Yet the Government's view is that the Constitution had no effect there [at Guantanamo], at least as to noncitizens, because the United States disclaimed sovereignty in the formal sense of the term. The necessary implication of the argument is that by surrendering formal sovereignty over any unincorporated territory to a third party, while at the same time entering into a lease that grants total control over the territory back to the United States, it would be possible for the political branches to govern without legal constraint.

Our basic charter cannot be contracted away like this. The Constitution grants Congress and the President the power to acquire, dispose of, and govern territory, not the power to decide when and where its terms apply. Even when the United States acts outside its borders, its powers are not "absolute and unlimited" but are subject "to such restrictions as are expressed in the Constitution." Murphy v. Ramsey, 114 U. S. 15, 44 (1885). Abstaining from questions involving formal sovereignty and territorial governance is one thing. To hold the political branches have the power to switch the Constitution on or off at will is quite another. The former position reflects this Court's recognition that certain matters requiring political judgments are best left to the political branches. The latter would permit a striking anomaly in our tripartite system of government, leading to a regime in which Congress and the President, not this Court, say "what the law is." Marbury v. Madison, 1 Cranch 137, 177 (1803).

In that passage, the Court upbraids the Bush administration, which sought this unconstitutional law and argued to uphold it, for claiming that the President has the right to "switch the Constitution on or off at will." The Court is absolutely correct about this, there is no doubt that this is what our current President has attempted. And the Court is correct that this is an attempt to circumvent the system of separation of powers that is at the heart of the "basic charter" on which the United States was founded.

The fact that this decision was a slim 5-4 majority, with this President's two appointees making up half the dissenting view, is a frightening thought.

One can only pity the cowards...

[Arrogant-Bastard (141720)]

...who are calling for a Constitutional amendment to bypass this decision. It's clear that their grasp of the fundamental human rights which pre-date and transcend even the Constitution's sweeping reach is limited, and that in their mindless fear, they've lost sight of why those rights are critically important. They have failed to live up to their sworn oaths to uphold and defend the Constitution of the United States -- and yet they have the audacity to wrap themselves in the flag and call themselves "patriots".

They're the farthest thing from it. Real patriots understand why we must defend these rights, even at the cost of our lives -- because without them, we aren't the United States of America; we're just another transient tinpot dictatorship of no value and no lasting importance.

5-4 Majority

[opusbuddy (164089)]

What bothers me is that 4 Justices of the Supreme Court of the United States voted to suspend Habeas Corpus.

Sometimes you wonder

[shma (863063)]

I just wanted to call attention to a quote from one of the dissenting judges:

Of the two dissenting opinions, Justice Antonin Scalia's was the more apocalyptic, predicting "devastating" and "disastrous consequences" from the decision. "It will almost certainly cause more Americans to be killed," he said. "The nation will live to regret what the court has done today."

Keep in mind that he's talking about allowing people who have been held in detention for 6 years without even having been charged (let alone convicted) to challenge their detention. So explain to me how a man who doesn't even understand the concept of presumption of innocence is allowed to sit on the supreme court.

Re:Sometimes you wonder

[Luyseyal (3154)]

I disagree. I don't think the Legislative or Executive branches have the authority to switch the Constitution on and off at will. Habeus corpus should apply to any American citizen or foreign detainee held by Americans (excluding foreign army prisoners in a time of declared war). Period. There may be some finagling over how classified evidence, etc. is handled. And that is fine and dandy with me. But the right to a fair legal justification for your imprisonment is a fundamental human right entirely at odds with infinite detainment. I think the Constitution and the Supreme Court clearly support that right.

$0.02USD,
-l

Time lag

[mcelrath (8027)]

So it takes approximately 7 years between blatently unconstitutional actions by one branch to be reviewed and overturned by another branch.

Fortunately for Congress and the President, they can pass new laws and executive orders on time scales shorter than 7 years.

In between lies the downfall of democracy.

Finally...

[mandie (69148)]

The SCOTUS just said, "Fine, you don't want to call them POWs, so now you have to go with the rules we use for people accused of crimes. Your choice, but you must choose one."

For everyone who makes fun of trying suspected terrorists in "ordinary" criminal courts, if it's sufficient for bringing murderers with less grandiose motives to justice, it'll do for ones who think they're doing it for some great cause. Heck, it's possibly more insulting to treat them like common criminals, if that's what makes you happy.

It's a great day to be an American.

We've only had habeas corpus since the 12th C.

[EWAdams (953502)]

These fundamental freedoms are MORE important, not LESS important, during times of national stress. It is those times when cowards like Bush are most prepared to sell our freedom, so hard-won over the centuries, for the promise of a little temporary security.

Guantanamo is Bush's Manzanar. In the hysteria of the time it might have seemed like the right thing to do, to a few frightened people. The judgment of history will be firmly otherwise.

Hudson Institute outright lying on Constitution

[rbrander (73222)]

I'm still shaking my head in disgust over a "warring talking heads" commentary on Canada's CTV network last night on this one. On the left, a Canadian professor who'd taught at Harvard. For the right, some guy I regret not catching the name of, from the conservative Hudson Institute. If it weren't the umpteenth time I'd seen it, I'd call it a classic example of the kind of brazen lying I've come to expect of these "think tanks".

I'll skip details on the other ways the guy embarrassed himself to any thinking audience - he tried maligning the Canadian's credentials at American law until the guy mentioned teaching at Harvard, for instance.

But towards the end, he actually said that the American constitution provides an exception to "for the Executive to suspend Habeas Corpus in time of WAR or insurrection" (emphasis mine). It doesn't. And there's no way a professional at that level made that big a mistake.

The framers chose all their words carefully, and it says:

http://www.usconstitution.net/const.html [usconstitution.net]

Section 9 - Limits on Congress

The privilege of the Writ of Habeas Corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in Cases of Rebellion or Invasion the public Safety may require it.

INVASION, not War. What do Invasion and Rebellion have in common? Only then do you have entire armies on American soil harming its public. Only when you'd have to give whole armies habeas corpus can you suspend it. If you have few enough enemies to manage with a court system, they all get the court system.

I guess I'm steamed because it was just the night before I learned the stat that not only did 70% of Americans at one point believe Saddam personally set up 9/11, but 80% of those supporting the Iraw war did so because of that belief. Which means that terrible damage can be done to America, not to mention hundreds of thousands of innocents, by lies such as the one I heard, espoused on TV, last night.

I leave it to the Americans on /. to decide what you'd call a guy who'd lie about the content of your constitution to encourage and support the breaking of it.

Oh, yeah, and one other part of the lie, one in support of their endless reaching for Executive power: the exception to habeas corpus is for the CONGRESS, not the Executive. The Executive can't suspend it at ALL, not unless Congress passes a law allowing it. The Executive simply can't break the law, period. Not under the Constitution.

If you can keep it.

Original Intent of the Framers

[mr_mischief (456295)]

Considering the Constitution of the United States was written largely by the same group who had written the Declaration of Independence, I think it is a difficult argument that the claims against the King would be allowed a pass for a new George.

The Declaration of Independence states that certain rights are endowed upon men by their Creator and unalienable. Among those are Life, Liberty, and pursuit of Happiness.

The charges against King George which justified the revolution included, "He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil Power" and "For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences".

The preamble to the Constitution itself lists one of the reasons for its ordination as to "establish justice".

Article III section 2 states that the judicial power of the Supreme Court and the inferior courts extends to people including "a state, or the citizens thereof, and foreign states, citizens or subjects".

The 5th Amendment provides for indictment by grand jury and due process of law. It makes an exception for those serving in the military during war or public danger, but enemy combatants whether on the field of battle lawfully or unlawfully are not serving in our military.

The 6th Amendment requires that one be informed of the charges, to be confronted by witnesses against him, to have the power to subpoena witnesses in his favor, and to have the assistance of counsel. No exception for military or maritime conditions are made in this Amendment.

Considering all of these facts, and considering that the founders who wrote and supported the one document were the writers and supporters of the other, I find it difficult to believe that anyone could seriously question the legal status of people being held as criminals indefinitely under the power of the United States.

The government specifically denied that these people were POWs. If they had been POWs, they could have been held until the end of hostilities with the countries in which they were captured. Being held as criminals, though, they have no fewer rights than American citizens under the US Constitution from what I can tell.

There's nothing I've read in the Constitution which says that non-citizens under the government's jurisdiction are to be treated differently from citizens in matters of criminal law. In fact, while the Constitution at one time allowed the historic fact of brutal slavery and racial subjugation, the Articles and the Amendments make clear distinctions in many cases between the words "citizen" and "person", and most of the protections are for the more generic "person". Now slavery is properly banned by the Constitution. Foreign parties accused of crimes should not be treated any differently than citizens, or what have we learned?

Constitution 101

[Doc Ruby (173196)]

The Constitution doesn't give us rights. The government doesn't give us rights. We have rights, inalienable rights, that come from "the Creator", whatever that is. The creator is a mysterious, unspecified entity, but it is not the Constitution or the government.

We, the people, create a government to protect those rights. In the USA, we (our forefathers) wrote a Constitution that our representatives explicitly agreed to support and defend. That Constitution creates a government from nothing, that protects those rights.

Those rights are inalienable. Even when the government fails to protect them, we still have those rights. But unless they're protected, we might not have the freedom to exercise them. That is why we create that government, which has no other power or even existence other than as we create it under the Constitution.

Americans aren't magically different from any other people. All people have the same inalienable rights. But what Americans have that is different is an American government that protects those rights. Foreigners have their own governments. It's up to them to protect their rights with their governments. Often they do not. But though it is in America's interest to help everyone we can to protect their rights, it is not automatically America's government's obligation to do so, unless Americans so instruct it. Even when we do, America is obligated to merely help those people free themselves , so they are free to create their own governments to protect their own rights.

That is what is fundamentally wrong with the Iraq War. Wrong with any occupying American government abroad. It's what was right with the US conversion of Japan and Germany from their tyrannies after WWII: we worked for several years to free those people, who then created their own governments.

But though we're not obligated to free anyone but ourselves, though our government is not obligated to protect anyone's rights but our own, our government is never free to violate those rights. The US government has no powers to violate any rights, except temporarily, according to explicit due process, and only when necessary to protect the rights of other Americans - like when jailing criminals, even suspending their rights to vote, freely travel and associate, and even to express themselves.

Americans in foreign lands have reduced protection of our rights by our government, as a matter of practical fact, but not from any change in our rights themselves. Foreigners in foreign lands have foreign governments that factor into the US ability and obligation to protect their rights, which is minimal.

But no one under control of the US, in US territory (including soverign military territory like Guantanamo) can see their rights infringed in any way.

Sometimes that happens. Sometimes the people in the government break the law, violate the Constitution. The Constitution of course has the remedy: prosecution and jail time, even impeachment. The Constitution isn't just some theoretical philosophy, but the only instrument which creates legitimate government power. And its power does not differ in application to anyone on US soil (with the sole and irrelevant exception that a US president must have been born American).

There shouldn't have been any question that Habeas Corpus must apply to everyone in US custody. But of course the 4 dissenting "Justices" in this case also installed George Bush as president. These people are part of a blatantly, flagrantly anti-American conspiracy among themselves to destroy America and everything it stands for.

Everyone knows it. Lots of us say it. But only far too few of us have the courage and integrity to live it. And we, the Americans with a clear conscience, want to bring these evildoers to justice [dailykos.com].

The Constitution. Dodging a bullet today that should never have been fired, that should have seen millions of Americans jumping to take the hit. The closeness of this call is just one 87 year old man away from making a total mockery of America as "the land of the free, the home of the brave."

SCOTUS does its job.

[oyenstikker (536040)]

From the McClatchy article:

A dejected Sen. Lindsey Graham blasted the Supreme Court's ruling Thursday on Guantanamo Bay detainees, calling it "dangerous and irresponsible."

It is not the job of SCOTUS to be safe and responsible. It is the job of SCOTUS to knock down unconstitutional laws.

Re:Ironic..

[dave420 (699308)]

We don't know the people in Gitmo are terrorists, as no charges against them have been presented, and no evidence has been put before a judge. Go back to watching Fox.

Re:Ironic..

[spun (1352)]

Your interpretation does not match that of US law. In the US, a contract where you give up an inalienable right is automatically null and void. If people could sign themselves into slavery, there would by people out there manipulating them into doing so. If I had enough money, I could bankrupt you and leave you with no other option but to accept slavery voluntarily. Thankfully, we don't live in a country like that.

Pressure?

[Nerdposeur (910128)]

I agree with the majority decision, but I don't agree about "more pressure brought to bear" on the dissenting justices. The reason that Supreme Court Justices are appointed for life is precisely so that (in theory) nobody can pressure them to vote one way or another.

Re:That's really nice

[Paranatural (661514)]

People often misquote Winston Churchill as having said that we can judge the level of civilisation in a society by the way it treats its prisoners. In fact, it was Fyodor Dostoyevsky who said: "The degree of civilisation in a society is revealed by entering its prisons." Winston Churchill actually said that a society's attitude to its prisoners, its "criminals", is the measure of "the stored up strength of a nation".

Seems to me that there are elements in this country who want to make sure that the terrible allegations the terrorists make against us become, and stay, true. And there are people who remember one of the reasons this country was founded, to be able to have fair trials.

We cannot allow ourselves to become the things and people we hate. We cannot become a nation that approves of torture, approves of lawless legal system, a nation that will treat others, no matter how heinous, as they would treat us.

We cannot hope to be a beacon of light in a dark sea by covering ourselves in the same darkness. Either you do the moral thing, or the immoral thing. There is a battle in this country, between those who would have us give up our morality for naught, and those who stand against them.

Re:5 to 4? I'm torn.

[mazarin5 (309432)]

They left off that in Scalia's dissenting opinion he said things like:

"The game of bait-and-switch that todayâ(TM)s opinion plays upon the Nationâ(TM)s Commander in Chief will make the war harder on us. It will almost certainly cause more Americans to be killed."

"Today the Court warps our Constitution."

"The Nation will live to regret what the Court has done today."

PDF [scotusblog.com]

A similar case before the supreme court

[goombah99 (560566)]

Several highly simmilar cases have come before the supreme court and all were very difficult decisions. The two most important ones were President Lincoln indefinitely detaining without trial citizens and press who spoke in favor of the confederacy. Unlike to day, where there is no declaration of war, Lincoln thought the consitution gave him the right to suspend Habeous. But the supreme court said it only applied in zones of conflict not the rear. And even under times of duress the constitution could not be switched off. Today's supreme court said almost exactly the same thing in the summary.

Then FDR also created the concept of "enemy combatants" for handling people who were spies captured inside the US boarders. While he should have treated them as Spies under war common law, instead he wanted their trials publicly suppressed and created a special tribunal outside the jurisdictions of any state but on US soil. The supremes had to argue about it. The argument was that clearly the US legal system can try people crimes so why not let it. And it would set a bad precedent for removing habeous for people captured outside war zones.

The book "In time of War" [slashdot.org] covers this an it's a great well written read. I recommend it highly.

I thought the following quote captured one aspect of the issue:

"But the real problem is the interminable detention period, which has no reasonable judicial excuse. The dissenters are quite right that America has offered a quite generous set of procedural protections for enemy combatants. But these are mocked when a detainee is an indefinite prisoner with indefinitely incomprehensible status. The problem is not the legal process but what happens when the federal government holds that process, at its whim, in open-ended abeyance. The federal government still gets a lot of leeway, and the benefit of the doubt, from the Court, especially in wartime. But ours is so nonobviously wartime, and the Bush administration has been so lax, opaque, and seemingly quite pointless in its interminable detention of a wide range of variably important prisoners, that todayÂs ruling seems to me to confirm the wisdom of both the majority and the dissent. I suspect the ruling will, if anything, cause most of these detainees to actually be tried, which would be nice, but not released, which would not be. And that strikes me as not only nice but just."

link [ithoughtth...oftheissue]

A good question is where does McCain stand on obeying the Constituional restrictions faithfully. Here's two articles from Reason Magazine (libertarian bent):

Longer [reason.com] and Shorter [reason.com]

Re:Agreed

[smooth wombat (796938)]

I remember that convoluted nonsense and so here, for everyone's viewing pleasure, are the words straight from the (literally) horses mouth:

Scalia's comments [thinkprogress.org]

Re:How's that for....

[kscguru (551278)]

Roberts' opinion scares me more.

The public will "lose a bit more control over the conduct of this nation's foreign policy to unelected, politically unaccountable judges," [Roberts] added.

The Chief Justice of the Supreme Court on record stating he thinks judges are unaccountable and should not be trusted to apply judicial oversight to political decisions? Bollocks. The SCOTUS is the highest court, it has oversight over EVERYTHING not explicitly denied by the Constitution. (And judges are held accountable by impeachment proceedings - if G. W. Bush thinks the justices are wrong, he should introduce articles of impeachment. And watch them get laughed out of Congress). The courts are guardians of the Constitution, not guardians of democracy.

Re:Isn't this the same SCOTUS that Bush packed?

[Free_Meson (706323)]

but I'm really surprised given how the Dems have been crying foul for the last 8 years on packing the Supreme Court.

It was a 5-4 decision. That four Justices thought that the executive branch could act outside of its constitutional authority whenever it felt like it should be pretty alarming.

Re:Troubling decision

[Cro Magnon (467622)]

Second, will Al Qaeda reciprocate? I'm thinking not. "Hi. We have kidnapped you and are planning on beheading you in our next propaganda video, but first you have the right to challenge being detained at this terrorist training camp in a court of law. Would you like a court-appointed Sharia expert to act as your attorney, or should we fly in private counsel for you?"

If we behave like Al Qaeda, how can we call ourselves the "good guys"?

Also, how do you fight a war under rules that were designed for domestic law enforcement? Dust the battlefield for fingerprints, stick his AK-47 in an evidence bag, and make sure to read the guy who was firing the rocket launcher at you his Miranda rights in the correct Arabic dialect or he walks. And of course if Al Qaeda manages to kill off the solider who carried out the arrest, all the prisoners he's captured get released since they can no longer cross-examine the arresting officer.

Obviously, the procedures for soliers in the field are different from the procedures for dealing with street criminals. How did we deal with war in the past? I'm sure we didn't worry about "due process" with the Nazis, but niether did we hold them indefinitely. Shoot them, try them, or release them.