Monday editorial: Who won? ‘We the people’
By a bare 5 to 4 majority last week, the U.S. Supreme Court confirmed what should have been obvious:
• No president is above the law, especially when it comes to depriving people of their liberty.
• No prisoner may be denied the minimum protection of the law, regardless of his citizenship or how dangerous the government claims he is.
People imprisoned by the United States have a right to challenge the legal basis for their detention before a neutral magistrate. They must get due process: a real chance to know the evidence against them and confront their accusers. The government must justify a person’s detention or set him free.
This is the purpose of the writ of habeas corpus — the “Great Writ,” as it is called.
These rights are what the U.S. Supreme Court upheld last week in Boumediene v. Bush, a case involving prisoners held at the U.S. Naval Station at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, many for more than six years.
No legal principle is more important to a free people. None should be more deeply cherished. And it is this principle that the Supreme Court majority reaffirmed last week.
Does this mean that the people declared to be “unlawful enemy combatants” by President George W. Bush suddenly will be released? No. It means that they must get a fair chance to challenge in federal civilian courts the legal basis for their detention.
The Constitution provides that the Great Writ may “be suspended . . . when in Cases of Rebellion or Invasion the public Safety may require it.” But the Court ruled that that was not the case in Boumediene.
Consider what the Bush administration — sometimes with the assistance of a Republican majority in Congress — has tried to do to deny the constitutional right of the Great Writ:
• Mr. Bush claimed — initially without action by Congress — that as commander in chief, he had the right to imprison anyone he classified as an enemy combatant, even U.S. citizens, and hold them indefinitely without filing charges against them, without allowing them to seek legal counsel and without any right to challenge their detention.
• The Bush administration also argued that prisoners at the Guantanamo Bay military installation were outside the United States and, therefore, not entitled to any constitutional protections.
• After earlier Supreme Court decisions knocked down these arguments, Congress became involved and pushed through legislation stripping the federal courts of the authority to rule on habeas corpus claims by Guantanamo prisoners. Last week’s ruling invalidated that move.
• Left standing were other legislative provisions establishing military commissions to try suspects at Guantanamo, proceedings that a growing number of military and civilian lawyers and judges have begun criticizing as the equivalent of kangaroo courts.
Chief Justice John Roberts Jr. filed a lengthy dissent to the majority decision in Boumediene that is petulant in tone and full of lawyerly quibbles. It contends that as a result of this decision, everyone loses — including the American people.
In fact, everyone wins — at least, everyone who believes in a constitutional system that limits the power of government to imprison people and empowers the judiciary to enforce those limits.
>>>”After earlier Supreme Court decisions knocked down these arguments, Congress became involved and pushed through legislation stripping the federal courts of the authority to rule on habeas corpus claims by Guantanamo prisoners. Last week’s ruling invalidated that move.”<<<
WRONG!!!
It didn’t ‘validate that move’.
It VIOLATED THAT LAW.
If you can’t tell the difference, you have no business weighing in on the matter, any more than the activist judges who have overstepped their authority had any business doing so.
SCOTUS doesn’t make law, at least it didn’t until 1973.
With editorials like this, who needs Ipecac?
We American “infidels” will eventually learn just how bad the 5-4 decision was when we begin turning these prisoners loose and most of them resume their terrorist agenda. Just shows that you can’t fix stupidity.
Two things:
– Here’s a McClatchy newspapers investigation into the number of erroneous detentions made at the Guantanamo Bay Naval Prison:
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/detainees/story/38773.html
Serious errors crop up when you don’t have checks and balances of the type the courts and Congress are supposed to provide — whether it be on detentions, post invasion planning, adequate equipment for military personnel. A consequence of such failures can be innocent people getting swept up in prison and young men and women in the military needlessly losing their lives or suffering horrific injury.
– Here’s what Republican U.S. Senator Alren Specter had to say about the Supreme Court’s decision in Boumediene:
U.S. Senator Arlen Specter (R-PA), Ranking Member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, today released the following statement regarding the U.S. Supreme Court’s 5-4 decision that reversed the D.C. Circuit and held that the detainees at Guantanamo Bay are entitled to habeas corpus rights:
“The Supreme Court’s reaffirmation of the constitutional right to habeas corpus will now allow the federal trial courts to review each detainee’s case to see that individualized justice is done and people are not held in custody unless there is competent evidence to show that they present a terrorist threat.”
A reasonable, informed, mature explanation of the Supreme Court’s decision.
Shocking how the same people who claim to love America and democracy are so willing to violate others constitutional right to habeas corpus. Everyone within the juridiction of the U.S. has a moral right to be afforded this right no matter who they are or what they have been accused of.
Its a blessing that these detainees have ones willing to fight for these rights for them because we have many Americans who do not have meaningful access to our courts when they are railed into our legal system.
The Supreme Court didn’t violate the law, they interpreted the constitution and found the law unconstitutional. That’s what the Supreme Court does within out system of government. They are the check on unconstitutional acts made by the Executive and law passed by Legislative bodies. That is our system.
I didn’t like their recent decision on voter ID laws, but I don’t think they made law, they interpreted whether it was constitutional or not.
Law is not made from the bench no matter how many times wrong-thinking Americans say otherwise. The Court interprets the law, they don’t make the law.
If they have “Constitutional rights” so does the President. He now has the “constitutional right” to grant every one of them a “Pardon”. They can be granted sanctuary in the the United States, as well. Sending them home could be dangerous for them the Iraqis might meet them and do bad things to them. They would not then be subject to ANY of our laws.
I think they should be pardoned and given sanctuary. We have to decide where they would be sent. My first reaction was to send them to Washington, D.C. that was several days ago.
That WAS BEFORE THE THE P.D. BECAME THEIR ADVOCATE. Now I think they should be sent to St. Louis, and given loft apartments, Computers, bomb making instructions etc…. all paid for by the U.S. government.
We all know what happened when Clinton pardoned the terrorist’s who slaughtered police officers in New York. They slaughtered again.
Is Bush as intelligent as Clinton? If he is, he will pardon them.
Where do you guys and gals think they should be sent? Washinton, St. Louis, or elsewhere? If you choose elsewhere where do you think they should be sent?
One can only expect that the terrorists will extend the same due process before they hehead our prisoners.
I hope everyone here has the same opinion about the SCOTUS after they uphold the second amendment today.
“Behead”. This place needs a preview feature.
>>>:The Supreme Court didn’t violate the law, they interpreted the constitution and found the law unconstitutional.”<<<
No, they didn’t.
They completely ignored the law, as in, pretended it wasn’t even there.
The Supreme Court majority has told the American people to ignore that, in no time in American history have habeas corpus rights been granted to unlawful foreign enemy combatants, to ignore that during WWII the Supreme Court ruled that unlawful combatant saboteurs could be denied habeas corpus, to ignore that during the Civil War that habeas corpus was suspended for American citizens, to ignore that the Supreme Court ruling seeks to give foreign enemy combatants more rights than illegal aliens. Supreme Court Justice Kennedy ignores the reality that the U.S. Constitution was for American citizens, not foreign enemy combatants during wartime, by arrogantly demanding that “[t]he laws and Constitution are designed to survive, and remain in force, in extraordinary times.”
That’s not ‘interpretation’, that’s ‘invention’.
SCOTUS is way out of line.
Damn those lengthy dissents that are petulant in tone and full of lawyerly quibbles! How dare Justice Roberts muddy the issue with such.
Bwaaaaaaa-ha-ha. You guys have got to be kidding with this editorial. This is barely worthy of the Riverfront Times.
Puhhhh-lease. I’ll take the Chief Justice on his worst day vs. P-D Legal Eagle Editorial Mush-heads on their best day.
BTW, it was refreshing to NOT see a reference to the NY Times… perhaps it’s somewhere else on today’s editorial page?