The Recent Supreme Court Decision

[catsittingstill]

Recently the Supreme Court of the United States ruled that the Guantanamo Bay detainees do indeed have the right of habeas corpus (also called The Great Writ (where a "writ" is a legal action)).  This means they have the right to challenge their detention in court.

So hurray for that!

And there is a nice analysis of the Supreme Court's opinion in Dan AdNauseum's Insane Journal (which by the way has an RSS feed called danadnausemij that can be friended).

Comments

[patoadam]

I find it shocking that four Supreme Court justices could dissent.

What if many or most of the detainees are innocent?

Did the classification of prisoners as "enemy combatants" exist prior to the Bush administration, or is it a political invention meant to deny the prisoners both the rights that criminal suspects get and the rights that prisoners of war get? If the detainees are regarded as suspected criminals, they have many rights they are being denied, such as the right to be accused of a crime and swiftly tried, and the right to have a lawyer. If the detainees are our opponents in a war, then shouldn't they be prisoners of war, and aren't many acts of war (other than war crimes such as the killing of civilians or the mistreatment of prisoners of war) legal acts of war rather than crimes?

Why are the detainees held outside of the 50 states? Is this just a cheap trick that enabled the Administration to claim that the detainees aren't entitled to habeas corpus because they aren't held on U.S. soil?

Note: edited to fix typo and clarify ambiguous phrasing

[tradarcher.livejournal.com]

"In remending the case, the Court noted that there were probably national security issues that might need to be addressed. It left those to the lower courts." From his journal.
All well and good that they are good to have the right of habeas corpus. Just remember that during the next terrorist attack.
I further doubt that other countries would give the detainees such legal rights. Only the United States does this and in front of the world.

[vixyish.livejournal.com]

I think the most appalling thing is Scalia's dissent:

"And, most tragically, it sets our military commanders the impossible task of proving to a civilian court, under whatever standards this Court devises in the future, that evidence supports the confinement of each and every enemy prisoner."

Right. We wouldn't want anybody to have to PROVE anything.

[hitchkitty.livejournal.com]

Yeah, a tragic thing it would be, if suddenly evidence were required to support each and every -- to use a disturbingly familiar phrase -- "police action".

[catsittingstill.livejournal.com]

I am also concerned about the four dissensions. To my mind, America is more than just a geographic accident; it is a country founded on the principle that, for the sake of justice, there must be limits on government power. One of the limits is that people can't just be locked away without evidence of wrongdoing.

As I understand it, the "enemy combatant" designation existed before the Bush administration, but meant (roughly) "enemy soldier." So captured enemy soldiers would be held as prisoners of war, and returned when the war is over.

The Bush administration redefined "enemy combatant" to mean (roughly) "prisoner we say we think is a member of Al Quaeda." As near as I can figure out, they don't get the rights of either prisoners of war or criminals--that is in fact the purpose of calling them "enemy combatants"--to deprive them of any rights. I think that was also the purpose of holding them at Guantanamo Bay, instead of on American soil--to muddy the issue of whether they should get habeas corpus rights.

So yes, it was a cheap trick. I think.

[catsittingstill.livejournal.com]

To my mind, America is more than just a geographic accident--it's more than a place, it's a government and a society founded on principles of justice and human rights. One of those principles is the concept that the government is not allowed to confine someone indefinitely just because they say so. The government must prove that there is reason to think that the person being confined has done something wrong. A person imprisoned by the government thus has the right to require that the government present in court its reasons for thinking the person has done something wrong.

If we breach that right, we erode one of the principles that make this country worthy of allegiance.

Terrorists are rare. Abuse of government power--I wish I could say that was rare, but it's not.

[catsittingstill.livejournal.com]

Well, it would be nice to first prove they were *enemies*. You know, as opposed to innocent bystanders turned in to US forces by locals who had a beef with their family and wanted the bounty money.

[catsittingstill.livejournal.com]

:-S

[pocketnaomi.livejournal.com]

I finally got around to skimming the opinion, and it's pretty good, IMO. Kennedy can be overly deferential and slow to respond on the big issues, but when he decides it's time to put his weight behind something, he does it well.

[pocketnaomi.livejournal.com]

I think the words you're looking for are:

"Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. " -- Abraham Lincoln

[(Anonymous)]

So we can match one strawman with another, please point to a single terrorist event anywhere that has been foiled by disallowing habeas corpus. The British held IRA suspects for years without trial. It didn't end IRA terrorism. It started to end when conditions changed on the ground so the Catholics were no longer so definitively second class citizens.

If anything, such tactics are counterproductive, since terrorists can find ready recruits in the friends and relatives of those who are being held indefinitely for vague reasons. Guantanamo has probably been Al Quaeda's second best recruiting tool (after Iraq) for the past several years.

As for comparisons with other countries, most other civilized countries do indeed afford such rights. it is the uncivilized ones that don't and I expect the US to behave better.


Donald Clarke

[randwolf.livejournal.com]

"We're making enemies faster than we can kill them."

Depressingly many of the people at Gitmo seem to have been swept up by accident; they're minor participants at most, if they are even guilty of anything other than being in the wrong place at the wrong time. But the enemies we are making by abusing them--they are many, and some of them are not minor at all.

[randwolf.livejournal.com]

Old Scaly the monarchist, bleh.

Why have we come to this? It's not just Bush & Cheney; the Senate approved these people, and their legal philosophies were matters of record. How much reform do we need?