Restoring The Constitution
In a landmark decision last week, the Supreme Court ruled that habeas
corpus protections -- a time-honored
principle entitling all
who are imprisoned to challenge the
basis for their confinement in a court of law -- apply
to detainees held at Guantanamo Bay. "We hold these
petitioners do
have
the habeas corpus privilege,"
wrote Justice Anthony
Kennedy. The Guantanamo "review process is, on its
face, an inadequate
substitute for habeas corpus,"
he added. The decision in Boumediene
v. Bush "is a stinging
rebuke of the Bush administration's
flawed detention policies,"
Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT) stated. President Bush, unsurprisingly,
disagreed
with the decision. "We'll abide by the court's decision. That doesn't
mean I have to agree with it,"
he said. On Sunday, Weekly Standard
editor Bill Kristol hinted that Sens. John McCain (R-AZ) and Lindsey
Graham (R-SC) would introduce legislation undermining the
decision by
setting up a "national
security court." Rejecting such
calls to reopen debate on the
issue, Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL) remarked, "Follow the Supreme Court. The
Supreme Court says these people have right to know why they're being
held and what the charges are. That's
so basic and fundamental."
STRIKING
DOWN POOR LAWS: "The
Court repudiated
the efforts of Congress and the
Bush administration to strip the
federal courts of jurisdiction to hear habeas corpus petitions on
behalf of detainees held at Guantanamo Bay and to substitute
constitutionally-defective procedures in their place," noted Center for
American Progress Senior Fellow Mark Agrast. The decision found that
the Combatant Status Review Tribunals, mandated by
Detainee
Treatment Act of 2005, do not constitute an adequate
substitute for habeas, resulting
in a "considerable risk of error"
in the tribunal's decisions. The Court
declared unconstitutional
Section 7 of the Military Commissions Act (MCA) of 2006, legislation
that
allowed Bush to imprison indefinitely any "unlawful
combatant" and suspend
the habeas writ for detainees. The
MCA abolished habeas "despite the fact that
the Constitution permits suspension of that writ only 'in
Cases of
Rebellion or Invasion,'" the
Court noted. The decision does
not address, however, whether the Bush administration had been "holding
a single
person illegally" at Guantanamo.
"[O]ur opinion does not address
the content of the law that governs
petitioners' detention," Kennedy wrote. "That is a matter yet to be
determined."
TAMING THE EXECUTIVE: The
decision is the fourth
blow to the administration's
detainee policies, each of which rein in
Bush's sweeping claims of executive power. In June 2004, the Court
issued two opinions on detainee issues. The Hamdi v. Rumsfeld
case "ruled that a U.S. citizen seized on the Afghanistan battlefield
and detained in a U.S. military brig can challenge his detention in
U.S. courts."s In Rasul v. Bush, the Court "held that foreign-born
detainees can challenge their detention in U.S. courts." In 2006, in
Hamdan v. Rumsfeld, the
Court held that the military
commissions system established
by a 2001 order from
Bush violated the Uniform Code of Military Justice and the
Geneva
Conventions. "[T]he Executive is bound to comply with the Rule
of Law that prevails in
this jurisdiction," Justice John Paul Stevens wrote. Last week's
decision also restrains Bush's power grab. Chief Justice John Roberts
"unwittingly provides a fitting
epitaph for the president's disastrous legal adventures," Ken Gude,
Associate Director of the International Rights and Responsibility
Program at
CAP, noted. "One cannot help but think...that this decision
is not
really about the detainees at all, but about control
of federal policy regarding
enemy combatants," Roberts remarked.
CONSERVATIVE
FEARMONGERING:
Several conservatives have responded to the decision with inflammatory
rhetoric. In
his dissent, Justice Antonin Scalia devoted an entire
section to "a description of the disastrous
consequences
of what the Court has done today." "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,"
Scalia wrote.
Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich remarked, "This court decision is a
disaster, which
could
cost us a city." Graham called
it "dangerous
and irresponsible." In contrast,
Graham wrote a letter to
then-Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld in 2003 stating, "A serious
process must be established in
the very near term either to
formally treat and process the detainees as war criminals or to return
them to their countries for appropriate judicial action." As Graham
seemed to realize then, granting habeas rights to detainees is unlikely
to result in threats to public safety. The Court's decision,
in fact, will not result in the release of a single dangerous person.
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"Responding to reports that some lenders have stopped offering federal loans at community and other colleges, two Democratic senators introduced legislation Tuesday to prohibit lenders from picking and choosing among institutions."
FLORIDA:
"115,232 Florida felons had regained their voting rights since new
rules took effect last April."
IOWA:
"Iowa's two senators said Tuesday they plan to seek the same kind of
federal help for flooded Iowans that was given to the victims of
Hurricane Katrina."
OREGON:
State is "seeing mass resignations from elected office and public
boards" as a stringent ethics reform law takes effect.
THINK
PROGRESS: CNN's Glenn Beck: "It
is approaching treason" to elect a
progressive Congress.
WONK
ROOM: The Bush administration
goes the distance by making it harder
for kids to get to school.
PERRSPECTIVES:
Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) politicizes the death of NBC's Tim Russert.
DAILY
KOS: Disgraced "reporter" Jeff
Gannon is blogging for the National
Press Club.
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