Hamdan, rather.
Ahh…they wrote seperate dissents.
No. Alito wrote a separate dissent, Scalia did not.
You’re right, my bad. Scalia wrote a dissent, and so do Thomas and Alito. Sorry for the confusion.
Am I misreading this then?
Hamdan v. Rumsfeld [PDF File]
Scalia’s part starts on page 103 of the file.
Anyway, let’s look at what Scalia means in the quote in the OP, as it’s not all that hard to figure out. If Congress passes a law that says “X”, by what authority does the court claim that the law does not say “X”. This has nothing to do with the constitution. Clearly the court can and does weigh in on whether “X” is constitutional or not. But that’s not what they’re doing in this case. They are simply trying to interpret that particular law-- the DTA. And the DTA explicitly defines what court has jurisdiction over the detainees. It’s not some hidden inference, it says plainly that:
The problem with wading thru all this stuff is that both the plurality decision and the dissenting opinions all refer to earlier cases and what those case mean. I don’t have the inclination to backtrack thru all those earlier cases and see which justices are reading them “correctly” and which are not. I just don’t see anything unreasonable in Scalia’s dissent. And the OP doesn’t know what the fuck he’s talking about. I can guarantee you that he didn’t take the time to analyze what was written, he just let his knee jerk as it usually does.
I can understand the Thomas objection, but that law (cited by John Mace and central to this case) strikes me as ex post facto, no? The Guantanamo prisoners were mostly captured prior to the passage of it, and this law is stating that they have no right to habeas corpus after the fact of their arrest. Which would be unconstitutional.
BTW, anything anywhere that says* habeas corpus *only applies to US citizens? Or that anything else in the Constitution relating to rights should be construed that way? I would think it would apply to anyone falling under the USG’s jurisdiction, which is an entirely different thing.
Just curious…
I don’t think that is correct-- this law limits the jurisdiction of certain courts in the matter of habeas corpus, but does not deny that right outright. It basically sets up one court as the arbiter-- the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia.
I don’t believe that the law is ex post facto, because it does not speak to any specific infraction, but rather to the disposition of people already detained. But, the court’s decision was close to be along the lines of rejecting an ex post facto statute, since it assume these few cases that were pending at the time of the legislation are not affected by that legislation. Scalia noted, however, that no court decision previous to this one had taken that position.
Let me add that the court’s assumption that this law does not apply to pending cases was based on the fact that the law did not explicilty say it was applicapble to pending cases, not on the constitutional provision against ex post facto law. It’s clear that had the Congress been explicit about the law being applicable to pending cases that the court would not have ruled as it did. Hence, I don’t see this as an ex post facto matter.