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SCOTUS Grants Guantanamo Prisoners Habeas Corpus
beebee and other readers sent word that the US Supreme Court has, by a 5 to 4 majority, ruled that the Constitution applies at Guantanamo. Accused terrorists can now go to federal court to challenge their continued detention (the right to habeas corpus), meaning that civil judges will now have the power to check the government's designation of Gitmo detainees as enemy combatants. This should remedy one of the major issues Human Rights activists have with the detention center. However, Gitmo is unlikely to close any time soon. The NYTimes reporting on the SCOTUS decision goes into more detail on the vigor of the minority opinion. McClatchy reports the outrage the decision has caused on the right, with one senator calling for a Constitutional amendment "to blunt the effect of this decision."
Sudden outbreak of common sense?
How long have those guys been rotting down there? 6 years?
Ok -- so we capture people on the battle field in Afghanistan and take them prisoner. Bush &co. don't want to classify them as "prisoners of war," because then they'd get Geneva Convention protection.
So, reaching back to FDR, they pull this "enemy combatant" thing out of their ass and say that now they can do whatever they want. Now, the Supreme Court is saying that "enemy combatants" are somehow criminals who are entitled to the protections of the civilian legal system.
If they were just reclassified as POWs, then they could be held until the war is over -- which, like the war on drugs, it never will be. So, they could be held forever, without any need for a trial - because you can't be tried for "murder" or "conspiring to murder Americans" if you are a soldier in time of war.
But yet, Bush &co still aren't going to want to reclassify them as POWs.
Jeebus. I seriously can't wait to get a new administration that will just settle on what the status of these prisoners is so that we don't have to hear about this crap anymore. Want to keep them forever? Call them POWs. Want to try them to make some sort of b.s. point like Nuremberg? Then they get the protection of a court system.
I'm really not seeing how they can have it both ways, but then again I'm not a lawyer -- just a human (usually an exclusive option).
They're the farthest thing from it. Real patriots understand why we must defend these rights, even at the cost of our lives -- because without them, we aren't the United States of America; we're just another transient tinpot dictatorship of no value and no lasting importance.
What bothers me is that 4 Justices of the Supreme Court of the United States voted to suspend Habeas Corpus.
If this were easy, they wouldn't need us to do it!
The constitution isn't "granted" to non-citizens, it limits what the government can do to people. Which is a good thing, since then the government can't push the constitution aside by inventing new ways to revoke citizenships.
Sorry, you don't need to be a citizen to get constitutional rights. you just need to "be there". The constitution then grants more rights to the citenship, like to elect representative and so on.
We don't know the people in Gitmo are terrorists, as no charges against them have been presented, and no evidence has been put before a judge. Go back to watching Fox.
I agree with the majority decision, but I don't agree about "more pressure brought to bear" on the dissenting justices. The reason that Supreme Court Justices are appointed for life is precisely so that (in theory) nobody can pressure them to vote one way or another.
So it takes approximately 7 years between blatently unconstitutional actions by one branch to be reviewed and overturned by another branch.
Fortunately for Congress and the President, they can pass new laws and executive orders on time scales shorter than 7 years.
In between lies the downfall of democracy.
1^2=1; (-1)^2=1; 1^2=(-1)^2; 1=-1; 1=0.
We cannot allow ourselves to become the things and people we hate. We cannot become a nation that approves of torture, approves of lawless legal system, a nation that will treat others, no matter how heinous, as they would treat us.
We cannot hope to be a beacon of light in a dark sea by covering ourselves in the same darkness. Either you do the moral thing, or the immoral thing. There is a battle in this country, between those who would have us give up our morality for naught, and those who stand against them.
The SCOTUS just said, "Fine, you don't want to call them POWs, so now you have to go with the rules we use for people accused of crimes. Your choice, but you must choose one."
For everyone who makes fun of trying suspected terrorists in "ordinary" criminal courts, if it's sufficient for bringing murderers with less grandiose motives to justice, it'll do for ones who think they're doing it for some great cause. Heck, it's possibly more insulting to treat them like common criminals, if that's what makes you happy.
It's a great day to be an American.
Grüß Gott aus Bayern!
A 5-4 decision means that the somewhat-sane members of the court outnumbered the completely-crazy members of the court by One Single Vote. We've got ourselves a Supreme Court that's divided on the meaning of some of the most fundamental aspects American law. This doesn't bode well for the next 30 years.
-Sean
Very well said. You MUST have a right to defend yourself. Else who is to say what you are charged with is made up.
Actually, it's more than that. It isn't a restriction on an otherwise-unlimited government, it's a grant of powers to an otherwise-powerless government.
"16MB (fuck off, MiB fascists)" - The Mighty Buzzard
I'm still shaking my head in disgust over a "warring talking heads" commentary on Canada's CTV network last night on this one. On the left, a Canadian professor who'd taught at Harvard. For the right, some guy I regret not catching the name of, from the conservative Hudson Institute. If it weren't the umpteenth time I'd seen it, I'd call it a classic example of the kind of brazen lying I've come to expect of these "think tanks".
/. to decide what you'd call a guy who'd lie about the content of your constitution to encourage and support the breaking of it.
I'll skip details on the other ways the guy embarrassed himself to any thinking audience - he tried maligning the Canadian's credentials at American law until the guy mentioned teaching at Harvard, for instance.
But towards the end, he actually said that the American constitution provides an exception to "for the Executive to suspend Habeas Corpus in time of WAR or insurrection" (emphasis mine). It doesn't. And there's no way a professional at that level made that big a mistake.
The framers chose all their words carefully, and it says:
http://www.usconstitution.net/const.html
Section 9 - Limits on Congress
The privilege of the Writ of Habeas Corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in Cases of Rebellion or Invasion the public Safety may require it.
INVASION, not War. What do Invasion and Rebellion have in common? Only then do you have entire armies on American soil harming its public. Only when you'd have to give whole armies habeas corpus can you suspend it. If you have few enough enemies to manage with a court system, they all get the court system.
I guess I'm steamed because it was just the night before I learned the stat that not only did 70% of Americans at one point believe Saddam personally set up 9/11, but 80% of those supporting the Iraw war did so because of that belief. Which means that terrible damage can be done to America, not to mention hundreds of thousands of innocents, by lies such as the one I heard, espoused on TV, last night.
I leave it to the Americans on
Oh, yeah, and one other part of the lie, one in support of their endless reaching for Executive power: the exception to habeas corpus is for the CONGRESS, not the Executive. The Executive can't suspend it at ALL, not unless Congress passes a law allowing it. The Executive simply can't break the law, period. Not under the Constitution.
If you can keep it.
It's been established for a helluva long time that the Constitution does apply to foreigners on American soil. The police are still bound by due process, even if the suspect is an Englishman or from North Korea. The Gitmo trick (and the unknown number of secret prisons) was to claim that the foreign detainees were not on American soil, so any Constitutional obligation was removed. SCOTUS has dispensed with that pathetic notion and finally stated that where there's smoke there's fire; in other words, if a detention center on foreign soil is still run by the United States, the detainees should have the same right to habeus corpus as if they were within US borders. This is a victory for liberty.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
How do we know that they're the government's enemies? You're assuming that because they're there they deserve to be there. Me, I'd kinda like there to be, you know, evidence... that whole pesky due-process thing. I'd rather not be wasting government money and what little good-will we have left in the world holding people when we can't even reasonably say that they are a threat.
...) sieze an American. They say that for, national security reasons, they can't reveal why they are imprisoning him, or provide any evidence that this person deserved to be imprisoned. We only have their word. Is that ok? Thats what we're doing right now, and it needs to stop.
Here's a little thought experiment. The British (or Germans, or Japanese,
What scares me more is that the ruling was 5-4 instead of unanimous.
0x09F911029D74E35BD84156C5635688C0
Considering the Constitution of the United States was written largely by the same group who had written the Declaration of Independence, I think it is a difficult argument that the claims against the King would be allowed a pass for a new George.
The Declaration of Independence states that certain rights are endowed upon men by their Creator and unalienable. Among those are Life, Liberty, and pursuit of Happiness.
The charges against King George which justified the revolution included, "He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil Power" and "For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences".
The preamble to the Constitution itself lists one of the reasons for its ordination as to "establish justice".
Article III section 2 states that the judicial power of the Supreme Court and the inferior courts extends to people including "a state, or the citizens thereof, and foreign states, citizens or subjects".
The 5th Amendment provides for indictment by grand jury and due process of law. It makes an exception for those serving in the military during war or public danger, but enemy combatants whether on the field of battle lawfully or unlawfully are not serving in our military.
The 6th Amendment requires that one be informed of the charges, to be confronted by witnesses against him, to have the power to subpoena witnesses in his favor, and to have the assistance of counsel. No exception for military or maritime conditions are made in this Amendment.
Considering all of these facts, and considering that the founders who wrote and supported the one document were the writers and supporters of the other, I find it difficult to believe that anyone could seriously question the legal status of people being held as criminals indefinitely under the power of the United States.
The government specifically denied that these people were POWs. If they had been POWs, they could have been held until the end of hostilities with the countries in which they were captured. Being held as criminals, though, they have no fewer rights than American citizens under the US Constitution from what I can tell.
There's nothing I've read in the Constitution which says that non-citizens under the government's jurisdiction are to be treated differently from citizens in matters of criminal law. In fact, while the Constitution at one time allowed the historic fact of brutal slavery and racial subjugation, the Articles and the Amendments make clear distinctions in many cases between the words "citizen" and "person", and most of the protections are for the more generic "person". Now slavery is properly banned by the Constitution. Foreign parties accused of crimes should not be treated any differently than citizens, or what have we learned?
If we behave like Al Qaeda, how can we call ourselves the "good guys"?
Obviously, the procedures for soliers in the field are different from the procedures for dealing with street criminals. How did we deal with war in the past? I'm sure we didn't worry about "due process" with the Nazis, but niether did we hold them indefinitely. Shoot them, try them, or release them.
Slow down, cowboy! It has been 4 hours since you last posted. You must wait another few hours.
A witty [sig] proves nothing. --Voltaire
The Constitution doesn't give us rights. The government doesn't give us rights. We have rights, inalienable rights, that come from "the Creator", whatever that is. The creator is a mysterious, unspecified entity, but it is not the Constitution or the government.
We, the people, create a government to protect those rights. In the USA, we (our forefathers) wrote a Constitution that our representatives explicitly agreed to support and defend. That Constitution creates a government from nothing, that protects those rights.
Those rights are inalienable. Even when the government fails to protect them, we still have those rights. But unless they're protected, we might not have the freedom to exercise them. That is why we create that government, which has no other power or even existence other than as we create it under the Constitution.
Americans aren't magically different from any other people. All people have the same inalienable rights. But what Americans have that is different is an American government that protects those rights. Foreigners have their own governments. It's up to them to protect their rights with their governments. Often they do not. But though it is in America's interest to help everyone we can to protect their rights, it is not automatically America's government's obligation to do so, unless Americans so instruct it. Even when we do, America is obligated to merely help those people free themselves , so they are free to create their own governments to protect their own rights.
That is what is fundamentally wrong with the Iraq War. Wrong with any occupying American government abroad. It's what was right with the US conversion of Japan and Germany from their tyrannies after WWII: we worked for several years to free those people, who then created their own governments.
But though we're not obligated to free anyone but ourselves, though our government is not obligated to protect anyone's rights but our own, our government is never free to violate those rights. The US government has no powers to violate any rights, except temporarily, according to explicit due process, and only when necessary to protect the rights of other Americans - like when jailing criminals, even suspending their rights to vote, freely travel and associate, and even to express themselves.
Americans in foreign lands have reduced protection of our rights by our government, as a matter of practical fact, but not from any change in our rights themselves. Foreigners in foreign lands have foreign governments that factor into the US ability and obligation to protect their rights, which is minimal.
But no one under control of the US, in US territory (including soverign military territory like Guantanamo) can see their rights infringed in any way.
Sometimes that happens. Sometimes the people in the government break the law, violate the Constitution. The Constitution of course has the remedy: prosecution and jail time, even impeachment. The Constitution isn't just some theoretical philosophy, but the only instrument which creates legitimate government power. And its power does not differ in application to anyone on US soil (with the sole and irrelevant exception that a US president must have been born American).
There shouldn't have been any question that Habeas Corpus must apply to everyone in US custody. But of course the 4 dissenting "Justices" in this case also installed George Bush as president. These people are part of a blatantly, flagrantly anti-American conspiracy among themselves to destroy America and everything it stands for.
Everyone knows it. Lots of us say it. But only far too few of us have the courage and integrity to live it. And we, the Americans with a clear conscience, want to bring these evildoers to justice.
The Constitution. Dodging a bullet today that should never have been fired, that should have seen millions of Americans jumping to take the hit. The closeness of this call is just one 87 year old man away from making a total mockery of America as "the land of the free, the home of the brave."
--
make install -not war
I disagree. I don't think the Legislative or Executive branches have the authority to switch the Constitution on and off at will. Habeus corpus should apply to any American citizen or foreign detainee held by Americans (excluding foreign army prisoners in a time of declared war). Period. There may be some finagling over how classified evidence, etc. is handled. And that is fine and dandy with me. But the right to a fair legal justification for your imprisonment is a fundamental human right entirely at odds with infinite detainment. I think the Constitution and the Supreme Court clearly support that right.
$0.02USD,
-l
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It is not the job of SCOTUS to be safe and responsible. It is the job of SCOTUS to knock down unconstitutional laws.
The masses are the crack whores of religion.
It has nothing to do with the fact that they're foreign nationals, nor that it happens "abroad". The federal government has no powers that the constitution does not grant. They can't do anything "abroad" nor to foreign nationals without constitutional power. It's not as though they have infinite power outside our borders "just because".
The consitution says, "The privilege of the Writ of Habeas Corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in Cases of Rebellion or Invasion the public Safety may require it." This specifically states that unless there is rebellion or invasion, the privilege of the writ of habeas corpus shall not be suspended. There is no rebellion or invasion in progress, therefore, the federal government, both the executive and legislative branches, has no power to suspend the writ of habeas corpus, which is the power of the judicial branch to review any and all detainments, jailings, or imprisonments.
There's nothing in the consitution that states that the executive and legislative branches can operate internationally, but the judicial branches cannot review international actions. The three branches of government are co-equal. I hate this recent distaste for judges by conservatives who want to reinterpret the laws of the land to let their idiot of a president do whatever they want. The judges are doing their duty to interpret the law. The fact that they're not elected by popular vote is BY DESIGN and should not be used to try to make their *co-equal* role seem less important.
The constitution doesn't apply to a particular location. It applies to a particular federal government, regardless of the location. The consitution says, the government cannot restrict habeas corpus, it doesn't say, it cannot restrict habeas corpus on US citizens. Habeas corpus isn't a right of American Citizens defined affirmatively in the consitution, instead, the federal government is prohibited from suspending the right period, with no other conditions. Currently, the government is claiming the power to suspend the right of habeas corpus for the people at gitmo. The constitution says, NO, you cannot suspend that right. Doesn't matter who. Doesn't matter where.
As far as your argument of "will Al Qaeda reciprocate"? Do we decide our standards of behavior by the enemy's standards of behavior? For example, the enemy punishes us by attacking civilians, so why don't we attack civilians aligned with their cause or civilians whom they claim to represent and fight for? Would that be the right thing to do? It's really sad to me that people don't understand the *reason* we're the good guys is the fact that we're willing to fight based on principles, and that Americans have been willing to die for those principles for as long as this nation has existed. Fools who would give up those principles in a heartbeat for security, fools who would disgrace all those who fought and died fighting the right way, when we could have won faster by fighting the wrong way, those people don't understand what it means to be an American. If more Americans have to die to defend the constitutional principles that make us who we are, then at least they die as Americans, rather than reducing themselves to the level of the terrorists. By giving up our principles and violating our constitution, we let the terrorists win, because we let them take away who we are and we let them take away what we believe in.
I prefer to believe that we can beat these people, that we can chase them down and kill them, without violating our principles and without giving up who we are. I'm willing to accept that there is a greater risk that there might be more terrorist attacks, and that my city could be bombed, and that I could lose loved ones in this battle, if it means that we stay true to our American principles and we fight like the good, strong, and moral people that we consider ourselves to be, and I consider anyone who is unwilling to accept the additional risk involved with sticking to our principles to be a coward and to have no claim to patriotism, and have no understanding of what America is and why we're the greatest nation on Earth.
What, you're saying that we need to stay in Iraq so we can do the Marshall Plan thing there? We've been doing it since the beginning of the occupation, and it's pretty much been frittered away. The schools and hospitals mostly got contracted out to incompetent or corrupt people who never finished or did a sloppy job; the few that actually got built were destroyed by insurgents. Despite American attempts to beef up the infrastructure, it's actually worse than it was under Sadam, with most of the electrical grid down most of the time.
I could go on, but you get the idea.
It's amazing how many "STAY THE COURSE!" people don't know about this.
It's all a bit fuzzy. Your government appears to be reserving the right to pick up and intern anybody they fancy of any nationality in any country and declare they don't have to tell us why, and don't have to let the interned people go at any time.
That's one of the thing that really worries a lot of us. We don't trust your government, so we generalise and say "we don't trust the USA or its people". That's sad and not very healthy.
Even the top people on the losing side of World War 2 got trials and lawyers. You are saying that the people in Guantanamo Bay have carried out significantly worse acts than the people who stood in the Nuremburg trials?
I don't want terrorists to have US constitutional rights. Kill 'em all.
What I want though is to first FIGURE OUT WHO IS A TERRORIST AND WHO IS NOT.
Just because the executive branch SAYS they are a terrorist doesn't mean they are actually a terrorist. And in fact, quite a few of the Gitmo detainees seem to quite obviously NOT be terrorists, but just in the wrong place at the wrong time.
So what I want is for ACCUSED terrorists to be given a trial, and then all the ones found guilty can rot in Gitmo or be shot as appropriate.
But what I do NOT want is for our government to be able to grab random people and toss them in prison for as long as they feel like - even if they do tricky things like put the prisons in other countries. Because if its OK for our government to do it, then its OK for other governments to do it, and that would crimp my travel plans.
paintball