Little redress in US courts for detainees
The Supreme Court avoided a test of Bush's terror-fighting powers Monday, letting stand a ruling denying Guantánamo detainees access.
from the April 3, 2007 edition
Page 2 of 4
In the two companion appeals denied on Monday, lawyers for the detainees challenged President Bush's expansive view of his war powers and asked the justices to clearly delineate what rights, if any, are owed to terror suspects under the US Constitution.
"What ultimately is at stake here is America's commitment to its core values and the rule of law," wrote Washington lawyer Thomas Wilner in his brief to the court on behalf of the detainees.
"That commitment requires ... that this court make clear that our government cannot evade the core constitutional limits on its authority – and the fundamental values of fairness for which our country is known – simply by placing its prisoners in areas beyond our technical sovereignty," Mr. Wilner said.
The two consolidated cases, Boumediene v. Bush and Al Odah v. United States, would have presented the first opportunity for the high court to assess the constitutionality of a 2006 law that sought to strip the federal courts of jurisdiction to consider the detainees' plight.
At issue was whether the Military Commissions Act (MCA), passed by the prior Republican-controlled Congress, violated the constitutional right of prisoners under habeas corpus provisions to ask a neutral judge to assess the legality of their detention.
A federal appeals court panel in Washington ruled 2 to 1 on Feb. 20 that the new law did not violate the habeas safeguards. The Constitution does not confer rights on noncitizens being held at a military base outside US territory, the court ruled.
Lawyers for the detainees said the appeals court was wrong. They said the Supreme Court ruled in June 2004 in a case called Rasul v. Bush that habeas protections historically extended beyond sovereign limits to any place under the government's control. Thus, federal judges have jurisdiction to hear the detainee cases at Guantánamo, the lawyers said.
Some 385 detainees are being held at Guantánamo Bay and many have been in US custody for more than five years without charge. US officials say under the law of war and the MCA they can be held indefinitely as enemy combatants.
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