Supreme Court: Bush overstepped bounds on Guantánamo
Tim Grieve:
The Supreme Court just ruled 5-3 that George W. Bush overstepped his authority in ordering military trials for detainees at Guantánamo Bay -- and that procedures the Bush administration had intended to use violate both U.S. law and the Geneva Conventions. While the court said that the Bush administration may hold detainee Salim Ahmed Hamdan "for the duration of active hostilities," it said that the president must "comply with the rule of law" if he wishes to have Hamdan or other detainees tried and subjected to criminal punishment.Justice Anthony Kennedy joined John Paul Stevens, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer and David Souter in the majority. Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito dissented. Chief Justice John G. Roberts did not participate in the decision.
People for the American Way, which filed an amicus brief in the case, is already hailing the decision as a "major defeat" for the Bush administration and a "victory for the rule of law." The White House had no immediate comment.
From the LA Times:
The challenge to the military tribunals was brought on behalf of Salim Ahmed Hamdan, who was a driver for Osama bin Laden before being arrested and detained at Guantanamo Bay.Hamdan, a native of Yemen, told his lawyer he was merely a $200-a-month hired hand. The administration accused him of conspiring with Al Qaeda to plan terrorist attacks against the United States.
In his lawsuit, Hamdan said military tribunals were unconstitutional because they allowed the president and his subordinates to define the crime, prosecute the case and choose the judges who act as the jury. In the majority opinion, Stevens said Congress had explicitly decided not to grant such authority.
"Even assuming that Hamdan is a dangerous individual who would cause great harm or death to innocent civilians given the opportunity, the executive nevertheless must comply with the prevailing rule of law in undertaking to try him," Stevens wrote.
Scalia, who wrote the dissenting opinion, said last year's Detainee Treatment Act "unambiguously" provided that "no court, justice or judge" had authority to determine how a detainee should be tried.
The majority's conclusion, therefore, "is patently erroneous," Scalia wrote. "And even if it were not, the jurisdiction supposedly retained should, in an exercise of sound equitable discretion, not be exercised."
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Categories: Constitution
, George W. Bush
, Law
, Terrorism
, War
