Coolio.
Well then we’re back to wanting to be able to see how the ruling got around this.
ETA: In response to aclubs.
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights is non-binding.
Perhaps. But there was a time when the US believed in stuff like that. The US was indeed a leading force in the creation of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
You know, the US can’t run around the worldm spreading “freedom” and “democracy” . buit then turn around and say that all that stuff isn’t binding on itself with respect to others. It just looks a little bit too much like hypocrisy.
That wouldn’t do any good in this case. Hasn’t the court just said that constitutional guarantees don’t affect non-citizens who are not in US territory? That’s why the concentration camp was put at Guantanamo Bay. Although, for the life of me I can’t figure out whose territory it is if it isn’t US territory.
And, you are in the chorus arguing legal niceties.
Yeah, but we’re not talking about beliefs; we’re talking about a wierd decision from a court case. Beliefs don’t have a lot do with law (nor should they.)
First of this never happens. 24 is not real life, and this never happens. Never? Never.
Second of all, this is disgusting, and while I’m sure you are right (that most people are fine with torture to some extent) I find it really truly appalling. That people would support torture for this idiotic, contrived “War on Terror” makes me so utterly ashamed for my country. What has happened to us? Where is our humanity?
If you make an amendment which specifically lists how much of the constitutional protections affect non-citizens who are not in US territory, I think it would be hard for a court to find thenceforth that the listed items aren’t extended to non-citizens who aren’t in US territory.
There is no higher law than the Constitution. So if it says that it effects foreigners, then from that day on it effects foreigners.
Torture suit. I’m thinking wool, scratch wool.
Of course. But that still doesn’t mean that people won’t cheer for it if they think it’s justified in the instance at hand. This is the same thing as the death penalty. Most people want for bad guys who deserve the death penalty to get it, but pragmatism makes it nearly impossible to ever say whether a particular bad guy actually deserves it.
But my overall point was that until you’ve made something a law, if Bush thinks that torture is justified, and you don’t, then you don’t have much recourse to deal with it. You can say that “everyone agrees that it’s bad” all you want, but quite obviously that’s not true. The President of the United States doesn’t believe it, for one. I wouldn’t be either if it weren’t for the realities of life which make it unfeasible for it to ever actually turn out like it does on 24. If I could torture one guy, knowing with certainty that I could save hundreds or thousands of lives, then yeah I would do that. I just highly doubt that anyone can ever be that certain in any timescale that’s meaningful. Hence, you’re better to illegalise it.
Well, hey, you can yell at a news article with rage, or you can yell at your congressmen about the deficiencies of the law. Only one of those has any possibility of a practical effect.
Sage Rat, I get your overall point. I just hate the way people come up with these phoney “ticking time bomb” situations in order to justify something this awful, and these situations NEVER happen. And even if, in bizzaro world, it did happen, there still wouldn’t be a problem.
If 24 suddenly became real, and an actual situation arose that there was a suitcase nuke about to go off in LA and you have to tell us where it is RIGHT NOW or we’ll cut off your ear (or whatever) then you could do it. And when you were brought up on charges, you would explain it, and the jury would let you off. Because that’s how real life works. But, it doesn’t matter, because these things never happen, and experts say torture isn’t effective anyway.
So, all this is, really, is an expression of barbarism, because people are incredibly sick. A whole not pf people would love to Osama Bin Laden be tortured, simply because “he deserves it” and they can’t even see that this makes them as bad as he is.
So we’re going to stop bugging China, Burma, Iran et al about their human rights records then?
Actually, at a high level, they do. It’s not that judges should decide cases innaccordance with their beliefs rather than in accordance with the black letter of the law. It’s that people do things because they believe in the rule of law, and in human rights, and in stuff like that.
What this court case says to foreigners like me is that US support for things like the rule of law and for human rights is limited. It says that various US officials can do what they like to non-US-citizens on foreign soil, and they can’t be trouched by US courts. If that’'s true, then why should all those foreigners believe in human rights and the rule of law when the US comes round preaching it?
So I think the case was wrongly decided, not because it is not in accordance with the Constitution, but because it sends the wrong message.
One more time. Passing laws isn’t going to do the job if the claim is that they don’t apply to non-citizens who are not in any of the 50 states.
I simply can’t see any moral reason for governmental authorities at any level not to torture US citizens if there is no moral reason not to torture a non-citizen. On a moral level the distinction between citizen and non-citizen is merely trivial, hair-splitting, and irrelevant.
I’m not a lawyer or constitutional expert, but you would certainly still have some rights whether they be constitutional or not.
Some rights I can think of you definitely wouldn’t have if you were on vacation in the States:
-Right to vote
-Right to carry a hand gun (maybe there’s a few states which are exceptions, but almost all of them aren’t going to let a non-citizen buy and carry a hand gun because you can’t apply for a license if you’re not at the very least a permanent resident)
If you were vacationing say here, in Virginia, to be tried and convicted of a charge like murder you’d have to be arrested by authorities of the Commonwealth and tried in one of her courts. The prosecution could not compel you to testify against yourself, you would have a right to an attorney, you would have a right to a trial by jury, the Commonwealth could not use a coerced or beaten confession against you.
Likewise, if the Commonwealth kept you in custody, they could not do so indefinitely without cause. You could file for a writ of habeas corpus and the Federal statutes that governs the writ make this very clear.
Where things really get sticky is in recent years where the President has issued executive orders stating that foreign nationals who are held as enemy combatants are not entitled to the writ, for a host of reasons.
The President has not wanted this issue to reach American courts so he has mostly kept these persons out of what he feels is the jurisdiction of courts which can make a ruling on the matter.
Despite that, there are two famous court rulings on the matter, Hamdi v. Rumsfeld and Hamdan v. Rumselfd.
The writ has never been an absolute right in any case, and can be denied even to American citizens under certain circumstances, as the Constitution states:
“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.”
You misunderstand the role of a judge. The judge is not entitled to “send a message” when deciding what the law says. He must simply apply the law as it exists to the facts he faces. If the message is flawed, it’s for the legislature to correct.
The role of a judge is to rule on the issues presented to him. In this case, lawyers acting on behalf of Mr Rumsfeld and others raised the issues of the plaintiffs not having a case because they were not US citizens. If the lawyers had not raised that issue, then the court would not have ruled on the iussue, but would have had to examine the more substantive issue of whether Mr Rumsfeld, as Secretary of Defense, had authorised or condoned torture. And, of course, in matters like this lawyers are subject to instructions from their clients – so ultimately it was Mr Rumsfeld’s responsibility to raise (or not raise) the issue and get the court to rule on it. Yes, lawyers should always do the best they can for their clients, but sometimes a client can say, “Don’t raise that issue: it’s not in my long-term interests for that to be raised, and it’s not the right thing to do morally.”
Mr Rumsfeld is now a private citizen, but he was being sued over things that happened (or did not happen) during his tenure as Secretary of Defense. So (at least in the eyes of the world) it’s all a matter of US government policy. And indeed, it is consistent with other policies, such as the failure to make US military subject to prosections for war crimes in international courts. It all looks like, “One rule foir us, and another rule for you.” However, given precedent, I suspect that this court didn’t have much choice – though, if the case gets to the Supreme Court, that court hooefully will feel less bound by some troubling precedents.
The court was obviously bothered by the tortures since it took the trouble to enumerate them. It appears to me that if it wants to, a court can find an interpretation of the law that does what it thinks is right and that fits the facts. That could have been done in this case and if it’s overturned on appeal, at least this court has clean hands.
This sort of thing is what I mean by haggling over legal niceties in something that any decent person would consider a great wrong and additionally, as a practical matter, harms our standing in the international community.
I know that this sort of turns a court into a court of equity rather than a court of law. However in such cases as this I don’t see much peril in having the legal thing and the equitable thing correspond.
It’s true that this bypasses the legislature at least for the time being. It is possible, however, that there is no law preventing the government from acting in such a manner because past legislatures considered it inconceivable that our government would ever act this way.
I have two comments. First, a response that accurately reflects my reaction to this paragraph, but is admittedly short on substantive rebuttal:
:rolleyes: :rolleyes: :rolleyes: :rolleyes:
That out of the way, here is a more robust reply:
There is nothing to prevent a court from sua sponte - on its own motion - considering and ruling upon the issue presented here. In any event, the whole point of our system of adversarial law is to prevent precisely what you contemplate above: two parties essentially colluding to frame an issue in a certain way to create precedent. That’s not how it works. We assume that each side presents zealous (although ethical) advocacy for its side. If that doesn’t happen, we cannot trust the results.
Either you believe in a system of representative democracy, or you don’t. You apparently like it when it produces results to suit you, and when it does not you wish to empower a council of wise philsopher-kings to overrule the representative democracy results and impose the ones you like. And I imagine the reverse is true: if the philosopher-kings reach a result you dislike, I rather suspect you’ll suddenly discover a newfound love for representative democracy.
In short, then, on any given day you wish to endorse whatever system reaches the results you believe are wise.
Fuck it all, mate, why don’t we just crown you King and be done with it?
I dislike the human rights records of China, Burma, Iran, et al not because their actions are illegal, but because their actions are immoral.
And yes, I criticize the US government for its immoral actions, such as unofficially sanctioning torture. It just so happens that torture also happens to be illegal, which is the only way to extract damages from someone or send someone to jail.
Nevertheless, I’m not a lawyer, but I’d still like to read this case. Has anyone digged it up yet?