Posted on 06/15/2008 12:16:25 PM PDT by Red Steel
WASHINGTON -- When the Supreme Court goes on recess at the end of this month, Justice Anthony M. Kennedy will be off to his summer teaching job in Salzburg, Austria. For the 19th year, he will teach a class called "Fundamental Rights in Europe and the United States" for the McGeorge Law School.
He tells his American and European students that the belief in individual freedom and the respect for human dignity transcends national borders. There is, he once said in an interview, "some underlying common shared aspiration" in legal systems that protects the rights and liberties of all.
That international perspective was on display Thursday as Kennedy spoke for the Supreme Court in extending legal rights to the foreign military prisoners held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. "Security subsists too in fidelity to freedom's first principles. Chief among these are freedom from arbitrary and unlawful restraint and the personal liberty that is secured by adherence to the separation of powers," Kennedy said.
The 5-4 ruling highlighted the sharp divide over the law and the war on terrorism. The dissenters, agreeing with the Bush administration, said foreigners captured abroad in the war on terrorism had no rights in American courts.
Justice Antonin Scalia dissented with the decision "to extend the right of habeas corpus on alien enemies detained abroad by our military forces in the course of an ongoing war." The ruling "warps our Constitution," he wrote in his dissent.
The majority, led by Kennedy, was more in tune with the views across Europe and of civil libertarians in this country, who have condemned the prison at Guantanamo Bay as a "legal black hole" where foreigners are shackled and held in harsh conditions without due process of law. The justices in the majority said that when U.S. authorities take someone into
(Excerpt) Read more at latimes.com ...
It must be grand to think of oneself as a near god.
Ridiculous. Scalia and Roberts are two of the most briliant legal minds in this country and they ripped you and the liberals in the majority to shreds in their dissents.
You side with the liberals who have abrogated war powers from the executive and the legislature and totally disregarded precedent to do so.
There is nothing more to say, you favor the oligarchy.
Bush, as usual, is being far too genial and accommodating by saying he will "abide by" the Court's decision. The Court did not abide by the decision of the legislative and executive branches, which removed the whole issue from SCOTUS jurisdiction. The 5 judges should be arrested, charged with violation of the U.S. Constitution, and removed from office.
Only if they wind up in their hands. Perhaps there will be some other authorities that can help with the detainees if any make it that far.
I’d like to see the liberal five tarred and feathered for this as well as the Kelo decision.
You mentioned two key words - trial and evidence. Up until the DTA there was no requirement for either evidence or trial. They could be and were sent off to Guantanamo without anything. Despite DTA, unfortunately the Secretary of the Navy signed enacting regulations that effectively gutted both the trial and the evidence part of this, thus the SC decision. Apparently one of the detainnees claims evidence that would absolve him of Al Qaeda connections, but he has been denied the opportunity to present this, hence the SC decision.
That was dumb, and the rug of DTA got pulled out from under the administration. This same heavy thumb of command influence has been placed on the scales of the Haditha marines, so it should come as a surprise to no one.
PS. The bio of the suit that is filling the SecNav position. Would it shock you to discover we have a Secretary of the Navy who has no military experience? The secretary of the Air Force who was canned for losing 6 nukes had no military experience either. Are you sensing a pattern in this?
Never in history have nonuniformed irregulars been given the right of access to our courts.
They unfortunately are not legal advisors to the US government. Furthermore, they did not write the enacting regulations. DOD did that, and got their head handed to them for undercutting the clear intent of the DTA. Go blame the Secretary of the Navy.
How dare I what?
Only for the moment. There is no telling where some judge clown will take it.
What war powers have been abrogated from anyone? These are detainees 8000 miles away from any combat zone. Congress passed the DTA creating these tribunals, and Bush signed it. The Secretary of the Navy then gutted the process in his enacting regulations. Where did the Secretary of the Navy get the power to interfere with the laws or the war powers of Congress and the President?
"Today, for the first time in our Nation’s history, the Court confers a constitutional right to habeas corpus on alien enemies detained abroad by our military forces in the course of an ongoing war. The Chief Justice’s dissent, which I join, shows that the procedures prescribed by Congress in the Detainee Treatment Act provide the essential protections that habeas corpus guarantees; there has thus been no suspension of the writ, and no basis exists for judicial intervention beyond what the Act allows. My problem with today’s opinion is more fundamental still: The writ of habeas corpus does not, and never has, run in favor of aliens abroad; the Suspension Clause thus has no application, and the Court’s intervention in this military matter is entirely ultra vires." Justice Scalia
Where is Justice Scalia factually wrong here Jackson?
And Kennedy's opinion made it clear that this was about as far as this Court was going to go. With the strong dissent and weak affirmation, I think that is a clear signal that the right to a habeas hearing is ALL they are going to get.
Personally I hope that is all they get. I am not a liberal kook. I come down on this side of this one issue because of what habeas rights represent. I don't see how anyone can be comfortable with any executive who has unreviewable authority to detain anyone, certainly not the same military bureaucrats who are pressing charges against the Haditha marines. That is why I don't trust them.
The majority held that they are not abroad since Guantanamo is under the full de facto jurisdiction of the US government. Look even Robert Gates has called for closing down the Guantanamo operation. The entire reason it was created was an effort to escape all legal jurisdiction by anyone.
Well, if they can haul off enemy combatants to Guantanamo without any review, why can't they haul you off to Guantanamo, hold you incommunicado and say that you are an enemy combatant without any review? No jurisdiction is no jurisdiction and no review is no review. Period
The power to execute war includes the power to determine where and for how long prisoners taken in that war are held, regualr or irregular. This should be obvious to anybody, that it isn't to you explains a lot.
The purpose of taking combatants off the battlefield and putting them in confinement is also obvious, they can't kill any more Americans. The court has no, I repeat no, role at all when aliens are taken prisoner and held outside the authority of Article III courts.
Except for liberals who favor the oligarchy.
Like you.
Incorrect. It is under our military jurisdiction. There are no courts there except for military courts. No law but military law
How many Ameicans have been “hauled off” without any evidence or charges or review and are being held at Guatanamo?
Terrorists caught in the U.S. have been given full trials and all rights followed.
You are just a paranoid lefty.
And where and in what court will that hearing be held?
Well that places it under US jurisdiction. That was the threshold that apparently needed to be crossed.
They lied and Kennedy tacitly ackowledged that in this piece of crap opinion. They lie, you swear to it. You're every bit as bad as they are.
There is no difference between GITMO and the prisoner of war camps in Germany of the Eisentrager holding. Both are located on territory not sovereign to the United States and outside the authority of Article III courts.
Until of course they lie and abrogate executive and legislative power onto themselves.
And once again you swear to it.
Well, if they can haul off enemy combatants to Guantanamo without any review, why can't they haul you off to Guantanamo, hold you incommunicado and say that you are an enemy combatant without any review? No jurisdiction is no jurisdiction and no review is no review. Period
Are you dim? Do you not understand that the words alien and citizen are not only spelled differently but that they have separate and distinct meanings?
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