SCOTUS rules that Gitmo detainees have Constututional rights

[Diogenes_the_Cynic]

I know there’s a pit thread, but this is here for a more sober discussion of the ruling and it’s implications.

WASHINGTON - The Supreme Court ruled Thursday that foreign terrorism suspects held at Guantanamo Bay have rights under the Constitution to challenge their detention in U.S. civilian courts.
In its third rebuke of the Bush administration’s treatment of prisoners, the court ruled 5-4 that the government is violating the rights of prisoners being held indefinitely and without charges at the U.S. naval base in Cuba. The court’s liberal justices were in the majority.
<snip>

The court has ruled twice previously that people held at Guantanamo without charges can go into civilian courts to ask that the government justify their continued detention. Each time, the administration and Congress, then controlled by Republicans, changed the law to try to close the courthouse doors to the detainees.

The court specifically struck down a provision of the Military Commissions Act of 2006 that denies Guantanamo detainees the right to file petition of habeas corpus.

With a now democratic majority in Congress and a paparplegic duck in the Oval Office, the ability to legislate its way out of the corner is no longer available to Whitehouse.

So what will happen? When will it happen? Will petitions start tomorrow, or will Bush and his minions find some way to delay and stall things until January?

[Whack-a-Mole]

Waiting for the 2008 version of Willie Horton.

The pubs will show how the evil liberals are releasing terrorists back into the wild and any terrorist thing that happens afterward will be a result of releasing Gitmo detainees (which frankly after their treatment might well be more inclined to the terrorist cause…damned if we do and damned if we don’t).

[Gadarene]

God bless Anthony Kennedy. Speaking as someone who worked on some of these cases at a lower federal level, this was absolutely the correct decision. Rasul and Hamdan couldn’t plausibly have been reconciled any other way.

[Two_and_a_Half_Inches_of_Fun]

I predict more litigation.

I am have not read the opinion yet. I just skimmed parts of it. But it does appear to answer any substantive questions. It only says that the detainees can seek a writ of habeas corpus in federal court which will allow them to challenge their confinement in federal court on the merits. I believe the Court left open the issues of what rights the detainees have under federal law. So there a lot of questions left to be answered.

[Diogenes_the_Cynic]

@Two and a Half Inches of Fun

I predict more litigation.

I am have not read the opinion yet. I just skimmed parts of it. But it does appear to answer any substantive questions. It only says that the detainees can seek a writ of habeas corpus in federal court which will allow them to challenge their confinement in federal court on the merits. I believe the Court left open the issues of what rights the detainees have under federal law. So there a lot of questions left to be answered.

Do you have a direct link to the text of the opinion? I haven’t been able to find one yet.

[Qwertyasdfg]

It’s about time.

[Simplicio]

@Qwertyasdfg

It’s about time.

Or about the third time, even.

ETA: Here’s a copy of the descision, DtC (warning, .pdf)

[Gadarene]

I predict more litigation.

You think? That was the whole point of the appeal.

[Diogenes_the_Cynic]

@Simplicio

Or about the third time, even.

ETA: Here’s a copy of the descision, DtC (warning, .pdf)

Thanks.

[Shayna]

@Whack-a-Mole

Waiting for the 2008 version of Willie Horton.

The pubs will show how the evil liberals are releasing terrorists back into the wild and any terrorist thing that happens afterward will be a result of releasing Gitmo detainees (which frankly after their treatment might well be more inclined to the terrorist cause…damned if we do and damned if we don’t).

No need to wait. He lied about being a Muslim! (There’s proof – he dressed like one!)

Can
we
trust
him?

:eek:

[UltraVires]

I think that this will be one of the few times that I side with the liberals on SCOTUS and with the OP.

If this was a traditional war, I could side with the President on this. But an open-ended “War on Terror” that is going on seven years, not fought on a battlefield, with no end in sight?

If this was allowed to stand, why can’t we declare a “War on Drugs” (a different one) and detain someone for possession of marijuana indefinitely without access to courts as a “unlawful combatant”?

I am going to go scrub my brain now for agreeing with Ruth Bader Ginsberg…

[elucidator]

It goes to a question which lies beneath the Constitution, one which I feel very strongly about, being a patriotic, flag-waving all-American radical. That the American experiment is a bold and revolutionary endeavor, that it decrees as a fact universal human rights, and establishes a nation where they may be manifest.

There are those who claim that such Constitutional protections apply only to the blessed few, the Americans. I cannot prove them wrong, but will never accept that they are right. Yes, we often fail, we are human. We try, and that is glorious.

[John_Mace]

I was listening to NPR this morning, and there was some interesting commentary. I haven’t read the ruling, and I’m going by memory of what I heard, but guy they had on who agreed with the decision noted that the court was careful to construe this very narrowly-- they said that the ruling would have been different if it weren’t for the time frames involved. IOW, the ruling would not necessarily stand if there was another 9/11 type emergency or if the detention had been for shorter durations. I’m not sure what “shorter” means in that context.

It’s also unclear to me how much power the civilian court is given to overturn a ruling by the military tribunals. Will this be a FISA type thing where the courts essentially rubber stamp the ruling of the tribunal?

The big problem we will be facing (and are now, to some degree) is that many of these people have nowhere to go-- not country will accept them. What a mess we have gotten ourselves into on this, not to mention the pain and suffering caused to the people involved…

[Algher]

@Whack-a-Mole

Waiting for the 2008 version of Willie Horton.

The pubs will show how the evil liberals are releasing terrorists back into the wild and any terrorist thing that happens afterward will be a result of releasing Gitmo detainees (which frankly after their treatment might well be more inclined to the terrorist cause…damned if we do and damned if we don’t).

They already have their Willie Horton:

http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2008/05/08/ex_detainee_linked_to_iraq_bombing/

A suicide bomber in Iraq was identified yesterday as a former Taliban fighter who was held for more than three years at the US prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, before he was handed over to authorities in his native Kuwait in 2005 and subsequently released.

The news that Abdullah Salih Al Ajmi, 29, had driven a car bomb into an Iraqi police patrol renewed the debate over the justification for holding hundreds of men the Bush administration has labeled “enemy combatants” at the controversial facility.

[Guinastasia]

@jtgain

If this was a traditional war, I could side with the President on this. But an open-ended “War on Terror” that is going on seven years, not fought on a battlefield, with no end in sight?

No offense, but wasn’t that the same justification used to intern the Japanese during WWII?

[tomndebb]

@Guinastasia

No offense, but wasn’t that the same justification used to intern the Japanese during WWII?

Not really. Lots of people from Germany, Italy, Bulgaria, and other Axis countries were detained and their detention has never been overruled (or seriously challenged). The difference regarding the Japanese detentions was that rather than picking up aliens for interrogation and detaining those whom some agent decided were untrustworthy, the entire ethnic Japanese population on the West Coast was relocated en masse with no investigations, at all, and the sweep included second and third generation U.S. citizens.

[Two_and_a_Half_Inches_of_Fun]

I have been looking over the decision and this part from Scalia’s dissent jumped out at me:

@Scalia

In light of those principles of deference, the Court’s conclusion that “the common law [does not] yiel[d] a definite answer to the questions before us,” ante, at 22, leaves it no choice but to affirm the Court of Appeals. The writ as preserved in the Constitution could not possibly extend farther than the common law provided when that Clause was written. See Part III, infra. The Court admits that it cannot determine whether the writ historically extended to aliens held abroad, and it concedes (necessarily) that Guantanamo Bay lies outside the sovereign territory of the United States. See ante, at 22–23; Rasul v. Bush, 542 U. S. 466, 500–501 (2004) (SCALIA, J., dissenting). Together, these two concessions establish that it is (in the Court’s view) perfectly ambiguous whether the commonlaw writ would have provided a remedy for these petitioners. If that is so, the Court has no basis to strike down the Military Commissions Act, and must leave undisturbed the considered judgment of the coequal branches.

If question of whether the writ of habeas extends to detainees is at best ambiguous, why should the Court overturn the political process that came to its own conclusion about that ambiguity especially considering that the four members of the majority told the political branches that they could deal with this issue:

@Breyer concurrence in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld

Nothing prevents the President from returning to Congress to seek the authority [for trial by military commission] he believes necessary. Where, as here, no emergency prevents consultation with Congress, judicial insistence upon that consultation does not weaken our Nation’s ability to deal with danger. To the contrary, that insistence strengthens the Nation’s ability to determine—through democratic means—how best to do so. The Constitution places its faith in those democratic means.

Is deference a dead letter in law now?

[Diogenes_the_Cynic]

Scalia is full of shit in that dissent. He comes off like a raving nutcase in that thing, declaring that more Americans are going to die and the US “will live to regret this decision.” he sounds like a total wingnut. Man, that dude really hates Habeas Corpus. He thinks it’s going to kill us all.

[Dinsdale]

Waiting for a certain one-trick pony to come in here and patronizingly explain to us how the majority got it all wrong here.

Damn, it is going to be nice if we don’t have to be embarrassed about our administration come January. Keeping my fingers crossed.

[Don_t_Call_Me_Shirley]

@Diogenes the Cynic

Scalia is full of shit in that dissent. He comes off like a raving nutcase in that thing, declaring that more Americans are going to die and the US “will live to regret this decision.” he sounds like a total wingnut. Man, that dude really hates Habeas Corpus. He thinks it’s going to kill us all.

It’ll be interesting to see how the Scalia defenders continue to insist he’s not result driven, simply because he can come up with a “textual” argument for whichever result he happens to want.