Court gives Bush a free hand with detainees
This is certainly not good news. One more power absorbed into the King's bag of tricks.
WASHINGTON - Guantanamo Bay detainees may not challenge their detention in U.S. courts, a federal appeals court said Tuesday in a ruling upholding a key provision of a law at the center of President Bush's anti-terrorism plan.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit ruled 2-1 that civilian courts no longer have the authority to consider whether the military is illegally holding foreigners.
Barring detainees from the U.S. court system was a key provision in the Military Commissions Act, which Bush pushed through Congress last year to set up a system to prosecute terrorism suspects.
Attorneys for the detainees immediately said they would appeal the ruling to the Supreme Court, which last year struck down the Bush administration's original plan for trying detainees before military commissions.
posted by walldon | 1:23 PM
2 Comments:
I saw this story this morning. Depressing. Am I right that this ruling is the effect of the law passed last year (was it called "MCA"?) barring military detainees from the courts?
If so, then I suppose the ruling is correct, so long as the act itself is (ruled) Constitutional.
Happy Stalin-day!
A decision like this seems almost beyond comprehension – but it’s not in today’s proto-fascist atmosphere (perhaps that prefix is kind or ostrich-like) where Republican-dominated courts really do not seem to give the slightest crap about what the Constitution really means. Not that I have done all the necessary research, but denying court jurisdiction over a class of “cases or controversies” that otherwise would fall to the Federal courts has always seemed grossly un-Constitutional to me. The power to decide cases or controversies is the “judicial power” that is granted to the judicial branch under Article III, and while Congress may have the legislative power to organize the courts under the Supreme Court as it sees fits, the result cannot change or subtract from the entire quantum of the “judicial power” (nor violate the Due Process Clause in the Bill of Rights). Thus, the right-wing agitation to take religious freedom or other hot-button culture-war cases out of the Federal courts always has struck me as fundamentally un-Constitutional, despite the legislative power to organize the courts residing in Congress that is used for support.
If a detained American citizen declared an "enemy combatant" contends that he lives at 1000 West Main Street, not 1000 East Main Street (where the information said a non-citizen enemy combatant resided), where is he going to prove either that he is not the person they wanted because they came to the wrong address, or that he is a citizen entitled to habeas corpus protection. The circularity is the very antithesis of due process.
Incidentally, Article I vests Congress with "all legislative powers,” and Article III grants the federal Courts “the judicial power of the United States” (but not the states, of course). The President, however, is not granted “the executive power,” but rather certain very specific enumerated powers beyond the obligation to “execute the laws.” Tends to undercut the “unitary Executive” garbage.
If you want the best preliminary hint that the pro-administration Republican judges are probably wrong, just look at how convoluted and technical their arguments become.
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