Bricker, if they never had this right, why did Congress have to include this section of the MCA?
Your position is that Congress was just spelling out what was already clear to everyone?
While you’re at it, can you explain for us the holding of Rasul v. Bush?
Specifically what treaty or treaties?
Sailboat
Really Bricker, I expect better of you. You should know by now that your opinion on legal matters carries much more weight than the ramblings of others, so you shouldn’t make declarations like this without evidence. Especially when they are patently wrong.
“We therefore hold that §2241 confers on the District Court jurisdiction to hear petitioners’ habeas corpus challenges to the legality of their detention at the Guantanamo Bay Naval Base.” Rasul v. Bush. Majority opinion here.
Saying that the prisoners in Guantanamo “they never had such a right; this bill, had it passed, would have indeed created such a right… but it didn’t pass” is an out and out misrepresentation. The Supreme Court held that they did have a statutorily created right to habeas. The fact is that Congress and the President overruled the Supreme Court and changed the statutory basis for the habeas relief after Rasul was decided. The pending legislation is meant to change it back.
You tell me.
Oh, right, I forgot this was the Pit. Please take my polite questions above and rework them as damning accusations of rank hypocrisy.
Dude, it’s a Pitting. Valid legal arguments not required.
Ha! Ha! I slay myself. I know, of course, that such a dodge, if ever offered here, would be immediately and vociferously criticized by those on all sides of the issue. So I would never do such a thing.
My system of values certainly includes a certain set of rights I wish existed, and would contend should exist regardless of the government in power. But since those values include a right for the unborn child to live without being killed, I am forced to recognize that my personal system of values is not a valid basis to rest an argument of proposed public policy.
In other words: can it, man. Don’t screech at me about how my personal values should be used here, and then reject that line of argument when it doesn’t suit you.
To answer your implied question: my personal values would almost certainly tip towards permitting these particular detainees to meaningfully challenge their detention.
That’s not to say that they have ever had any such right which was then taken away and is thus now properly characterized as being “restored” by the legislation at hand.
No, it’s not that simple. I don’t believe that Achmed Camelhumper, citizen and resident of Iraq, has the legal right to be tried by a jury, to be free of cruel and unusual punishment, to have the assistance of counsel of his choice, or to sue his local government for a law which discriminates against him by reason of his religion. That’s because he lives in a country which does not recognize those rights. Ergo, he doesn’t have them.
It’s THAT simple.
Um…
Yes.
Yes, I can. Unfortunately, it will require that I admit grevious error. And outright stupidity. So I’d prefer not to.
Instead, I will quote Hamlet:
He’s right, you’re right, and I’m wrong. They DID have such a right, Congress took it away, and it IS fair, not dishonest at all, to characterize the legislation at issue as “restoring” habeas rights.
I apologize to the OP, BrainGlutton, for my accusation of dishonesty, and to the Washington Post for that accusation by implication.
Bricker, look carefully at post #23. Then look at the last sentence of your post above mine. Thank you!
Edit:
Nevermind, you saw it.
Fair enough. How about you Mr. Moto? Or were you referring to how obtuse the Supreme Court is in your comments about “some folks?”
How long have we been waiting for this administration to get its shit together and give these prisoners due process? 5, soon to be going on 6 years. 6 fucking years and not one has gotten a trial. 6 fucking years, and the only thing we’ve done with these detainees is release them without charges. It’s a disgrace to this nation and the ideals it was founded on, and it is all due to the inept, idiotic leadership in the White House.
Despite the fact that I disagree with Bricker on nearly all things political, I wish more people (around here and in the real world) were capable of this kind of admittance.
Not trying to be obtuse, but I have a genuine confusion here. I thought the concept of inalienable rights included the idea that certain rights inhere regardless of whether a government recognizes them. Is that not true? Or are you contending that the specific rights you list all happen to be alienable ones?
Sailboat
I don’t think we are obligated by law or morals necessarily to extend citizenship-level rights to those in our custody as “enemy combatants”. I just think that it is very dumb not to.
The arguments against it tend to be that we can get better information from indefinitely detained individuals, and that we will all be saved, thank Allah, from frivolous lawsuits brought by the “enemy combatants”. Both of these are weakly supported, and even in the event that thay are true, I think a tangible benefit is derived from extending our bubble of precious freedoms to those who understand them incompletely.
It will not help to hold people in a shadowy prison out of the light, where they are free to make any number of claims about their treatment, and then finally release them to go back and tell everyone that our precious liberties are so much eagle shit.
Now maybe we can work on repealing that misbegotten Magna Carta.
I’m not happy about it either. Still, the trials were held up largely by considerable litigation over the actual structure of the commissions, hopefully resolved by the aforementioned Military Commissions Act.
While that act does limit habeas corpus, it explicitly does so for aliens only. It also explicitly affords full protections of the Third Geneva Conventions to unlawful combatants, per our treaty obligations, yet explicitly states that rights afforded protected classes under the Geneva Conventions do not apply to them. Basically we have obligations to them, but they have few rights as such due to their status outside the laws of war or any nation.
The case law on this subject isn’t well developed - there is something on both sides for lawyers to argue over, and the Supreme Court so far has announced that they will decide these questions, and not made so many actual definitive decisions. Military tribunals recently were struck down as practiced, but the concept of them was not disallowed, leaving open the prospect of that act I just described.
Trials are now proceeding under commissions authorized under this 2006 legislation, and we will see as the verdicts are litigated how this will go. If the results stand as constitutional, we should be able to open the pipeline up.
There is no such thing as a “right” without a legal remedy.
No world-wide “inalienable rights” exist in any meaningful way. What right to “liberty” does a North Korean political prisoner have, and just how do you propose he exercise that right?
There is another definition of the word “right,” of course, that refers to the general ideals that some people have, but I contend that model for the word is not a useful one, since there is no source authoritive for just what “rights” are in fact “inalienable.” Right to life? Sure. For the unborn child? Hey! Wait a second, buster!!
If there is to be a useful, objective meaning to “right” then it MUST mean, “that for which a legal remedy exists for its violation.” Everything else is wishfulness.
Well, I don’t know about you, but I don’t.
All men are equal how? In inherent worth? Sure, for what it’s worth. In the eyes of the law? No, not in all cases. That there are inalienable rights? No, I don’t believe that.
And the fault for crafting unconstitutional tribunals lies with… the inept, idiotic leadership in the White House. It was 2 years before this administration let the first detainee access to a lawyer. 2 years. It was 2 and a half years until they set up the Combat Status Review Tribunals. And every step of the way to get to today, this adminstration has been fighting tooth and nail, against these trials. And they’ve been fighting, again tooth and nail, from having any judicial oversight of the detainees who aren’t going to get trials. From Rasul to Hamdan to soon to be argued Boumedienne, this administration has consistently argued they don’t have to try anyone and if they do, they’ll do it their own damn way.
Over 5 and a half years and how many trials have we conducted, regardless of whether there are appeals, etc? We’re coming up on a year since passage of the MCA, how many trials have we gotten done?
Better yet, how many of the detainees are actually going to get these trials? Last I heard, it’s 10. Ten out of how many? 300? 400? The rest just get to sit there, detained forever. Thanks to the inept, idiotic leadership in the White House.
This administration’s tactics now are the same as it is in Iraq, delay, delay, delay, until the next admininistration comes into power. Then it is their problem to deal with, and they’ll be able to tell their voting base that whatever happens is all someone else’s fault.
Amok, why do you hate America?
As much as I hate to say “me too”, I’m going to say “me too”. It is disingenuous in the extreme to claim that the Bush administration has done anything other than use stall tactics to effectively get its own way regardless of what legislation comes out of Congress.
Now, I’m not one to call for throwing the alleged enemy combatants into our criminal court system, but we can do much, much better at giving them fair trials with at least some degree of oversight from the courts. Frankly, though, I think we’d be better off just letting most of them go. For the few real “enemy combatants”, like Kahlil Sheik Mohammed, we should be able to make a case against them without trashing our own values.