Supreme Court Decision on Enemy Combatants Held at Guantanamo

After reading the Rasul opinion, it seems that the unique sovereign status of Guantanamo Bay was in the justices' minds.

For instance:

Petitioners here differ from the Eisentrager detainees in important respects: They are not nationals of countries at war with the United States, and they deny that they have engaged in or plotted acts of aggression against this country; they have never been afforded access to any tribunal, much less charged with and convicted of wrongdoing; and for more than two years they have been imprisoned in territory over which the United States exercises exclusive jurisdiction and control. [bold mine]
By the express terms of its agreements with Cuba, the United States exercises complete jurisdiction and control over the Guantanamo Base, and may continue to do so permanently if it chooses.

Now, as Scalia points out, Gitmo has been considered outside US federal court jurisdiction in previous SCOTUS rulings. So we don't know if SCOTUS might extend this ruling to all American bases in the future, whether in Afghanistan or Katmandu.

Okay. I've had no formal legal training as of yet (my undergraduate degree is in Chemistry. I start law classes in August), so I don't know diddly-squat about citations, nor am I familiar with the caselaw. Others here may be. (Thud, what is your specialty?)

As I understand it, the US gov't argued that the federal courts had no jurisdiction over the non-citizens held in Guantanomo Bay, pointing to Johnson v. Eisentrager, where a German national was denied a review of habeus corpus to 21 German citizens arrested in China during WWII. The Supreme Court in Eisentrager denied because they found the facts they would have to ignore were too great.

support that as-sumption we must hold that a prisoner of our military authorities is constitutionally entitled to the writ, even though he (a) is an enemy alien; (b) has never been or resided in the United States; (c) was captured outside of our territory and there held in military cus-tody as a prisoner of war; (d) was tried and convicted by a Military Commission sitting outside the United States; (e) for offenses against laws of war committed outside the United States; (f) and is at all times im-prisoned outside the United States.” 339 U. S., at 777.

The Supreme court here decided that Eisentrager didn't apply here because the Eisentrager conditions weren't met. They are not nationals of a country at war with the US, and they "deny they have engaged in or plotted acts of aggression against the United States." (This stumps me -- does SCOTUS really take at face value a denial that they planned to fight the US?). Souter also argues that Gitmo is under the exclusive jurisdiction of the United States (undeniably true), and that the detainers at Gitmo are under their jurisdiction. If the jailers are undeniably under US Court jurisdiction, how can the detainees not be?

That's my read on this, but that and fifty cents wont get you a cup of coffee at Starbucks.

My speciality is California civil procedure.

Note that this is the first time the federal judiciary has EVER asserted jurisdiction over enemy prisoners of war. We held scores of thousands of German POW's in the U.S. during World War Two, and Confederate POW's during the Civil War who were U.S. citizens, and they did not have access to the federal courts.

This decision is plain nuts.

They are not nationals of a country at war with the US, and they "deny they have engaged in or plotted acts of aggression against the United States." (This stumps me -- does SCOTUS really take at face value a denial that they planned to fight the US Somewhat. What they're getting at is that the Eisenstrager detainees had had their chance to prove their assertions, or contest the facts under which they are detained, while these haven't.

Scalia's dissent shreds the majority opinion on the merits, but what is really scary is what isn't in the majority opinion - mention of almost all contrary precedent.

The majority opinion presents a surprising but characteristic (of bad decisions) type of analysis - result first and reasoning afterwards. Given the briefing, the majority opinion reads like an advocate's brief itself, not a judicial opinion.

This tells me that a six-judge majority of the United States Supreme Court is directly challenging the Executive Branch's war powers.

In a war where the homeland has been attacked with biological weapons.

And there will be more majority opinions like Rasul v. Bush.

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