Justice and Decency: 5; Bush Administration: 3
Jun 30, 2006 06:27 Filed in: War/Military
Based on the Geneva Conventions, the Supreme Court
systematically dismantled the Bush administration's
argument for trying "enemy combatants" in Guantánamo
before military commissions with virtually none of
the protections guaranteed to Americans under the
Constitution or even to military personnel under the
Uniform Code of Military Justice. Stevens, Kennedy,
Ginsburg, Souter and Breyer formed the majority, with
Scalia, Thomas and Alito the minority. Roberts, who
had voted to uphold the government while sitting on
the Court of Appeals, was disqualified.
The ball is back in Congress's court. It could pass another law to strip the federal courts of jurisdiction over the tribunals. It is troubling to this lawyer that Congress has the power under the Constitution to limit the jurisdictions of the federal courts at its whim. It is even more troubling that Congress would exercise that power to facilitate what are in essence Star Chambers, in which the defendants are not allowed to attend their own trials, to confront their accusers, or even be informed of all the evidence against them.
There is no legitimate justification for such marsupial jurisprudence based on military expediency. The War on Terror is no more a war than the War on Drugs and Guantánamo is no battlefield. The administration's argument--that the prisoners are not entitled to due process or even humane treatment because they are "enemy combatants"--is an argument no person of minimal intelligence and decency would accept for a moment. Only a judge conditioned by years of slicing and dicing principles of justice and fairness in the interest of expediency could seriously entertain such a monstrous proposition that merely by calling prisoners of war something different the administration can strip them of the rights enjoyed by prisoners of war under the U.S. Constitution and solemn treaties our government entered into more than 50 years ago.
What is so disheartening about this whole controversy is that it should even exist. What have we become as a people when we regard justice as something that can be doled out by the government to some but denied to others with an arbitrary logic determined by a powerful few? That's far more scary than the terrorist threat.
Hamden v. Rumsfeld, Secretary of Defense, No. 05-184, Supreme Court of the United States (large .pdf file)
The ball is back in Congress's court. It could pass another law to strip the federal courts of jurisdiction over the tribunals. It is troubling to this lawyer that Congress has the power under the Constitution to limit the jurisdictions of the federal courts at its whim. It is even more troubling that Congress would exercise that power to facilitate what are in essence Star Chambers, in which the defendants are not allowed to attend their own trials, to confront their accusers, or even be informed of all the evidence against them.
There is no legitimate justification for such marsupial jurisprudence based on military expediency. The War on Terror is no more a war than the War on Drugs and Guantánamo is no battlefield. The administration's argument--that the prisoners are not entitled to due process or even humane treatment because they are "enemy combatants"--is an argument no person of minimal intelligence and decency would accept for a moment. Only a judge conditioned by years of slicing and dicing principles of justice and fairness in the interest of expediency could seriously entertain such a monstrous proposition that merely by calling prisoners of war something different the administration can strip them of the rights enjoyed by prisoners of war under the U.S. Constitution and solemn treaties our government entered into more than 50 years ago.
What is so disheartening about this whole controversy is that it should even exist. What have we become as a people when we regard justice as something that can be doled out by the government to some but denied to others with an arbitrary logic determined by a powerful few? That's far more scary than the terrorist threat.
Hamden v. Rumsfeld, Secretary of Defense, No. 05-184, Supreme Court of the United States (large .pdf file)
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