"Held: United States courts have jurisdiction to consider challenges to the legality of the detention of foreign nationals captured abroad in connection with hostilities and incarcerated at Guantanamo Bay."
Now takes preceedence over say:
"The question now before us is whether the habeas statute confers a right to judicial review of the legality of Executive detention of aliens in a territory over which the United States exercises plenary and exclusive jurisdiction, but not "ultimate sovereignty. FOOTNOTE: 6."
I read chunks of the reference article. Paying attention to above. Part of the FOOTNOTE 6 below:
With respect to §1331, petitioners assert a variety of claims arising under the Constitution, treaties, and laws of the United States. In Eisentrager, though the Court's holding focused on §2241, its analysis spoke more broadly: "We have pointed out that the privilege of litigation has been extended to aliens, whether friendly or enemy, only because permitting their presence in the country implied protection. No such basis can be invoked here, for these prisoners at no relevant time were within any territory over which the United States is sovereign, and the scenes of their offense, their capture, their trial and their punishment were all beyond the territorial jurisdiction of any court of the United States." 339 U. S., at 777-778. That reasoning dooms petitioners' claims under §1331, at least where Congress has erected a jurisdictional bar to their raising such claims in habeas.
WE HAVE BEEN HAD ONCE AGAIN. The box is now open.
when you say "again" - the decision you are quoting is the one currently in place, where the SCOTUS ruled 6-3 to give the Gitmo prisoners access to the courts. this new law, if it stands, I still believe will improve on the current status quo. it all stinks mind you, but absent a declaration of war, and given the makeup of the SCOTUS, I don't know where else we can go.
The dissent opined the opposite conclusion, and pointed to Congress as being able to clarify any confusion.
Justice Scalia, with whom The Chief Justice and Justice Thomas join, dissenting.The Court today holds that the habeas statute, 28 U. S. C. §2241, extends to aliens detained by the United States military overseas, outside the sovereign borders of the United States and beyond the territorial jurisdictions of all its courts. This is not only a novel holding; it contradicts a half-century-old precedent on which the military undoubtedly relied, Johnson v. Eisentrager, 339 U. S. 763 (1950). The Court's contention that Eisentrager was somehow negated by Braden v. 30th Judicial Circuit Court of Ky., 410 U. S. 484 (1973)--a decision that dealt with a different issue and did not so much as mention Eisentrager--is implausible in the extreme. This is an irresponsible overturning of settled law in a matter of extreme importance to our forces currently in the field. I would leave it to Congress to change §2241, and dissent from the Court's unprecedented holding.
As we have repeatedly said: "Federal courts are courts of limited jurisdiction. They possess only that power authorized by Constitution and statute, which is not to be expanded by judicial decree. It is to be presumed that a cause lies outside this limited jurisdiction . . . ." Kokkonen v. Guardian Life Ins. Co. of America, 511 U. S. 375, 377 (1994) (citations omitted). The petitioners do not argue that the Constitution independently requires jurisdiction here. Accordingly, this case turns on the words of §2241, a text the Court today largely ignores.