Archives for June 2004

It was a busy day yesterday at the Supreme Court (I refuse to use the ?SCOTUS? acronym, it just sounds so wrong). Among the decisions published were Rumsfeld v. Padilla, Rasul v. United States, and Hamdi v. Rumsfeld. There are some excellent discussions of these cases out there, which would be of value for all Americans to read. They provide some insight into how the court will approach protecting our Constitution during this war on terror, and frankly, more American?s should take an interest in protecting their Constitutional Rights.

There?s a great blog, SCOTUSBlog, which tracks Supreme Court decisions, and offers some good insight, despite the horrible name. And Tung Yin offers some interesting analysis over at the Yin Blog.

The Court copped out on the Padilla case, dismissing it on a technicality. Of course, it was split along the typical conservative/liberal 5-4 vote count. Can you guess who voted each way? I?ll bet you can. Essentially, they ruled that Padilla had not named the proper respondent in his original suit, claiming that habeas challenges should have the warden of the facility where the prisoner is held as the proper respondent. I doubt we?ve heard the last of this case.

The Rasul case, commonly known as the “Gitmo” detainee case, was a bit of a blow to the administration, but was a clear victory for the power of the courts. In a 6-3 vote (Rehnquist, Scalia, Thomas dissent) the court ruled that the habeas statute does extend to detainees in Cuba, which essentially means that all the enemy combatants in Guantanamo Bay have the right to have their appeal heard.

By far the most interesting of the rulings is Hamdi, which was one weird breakdown on the vote. The majority opinion was written by O?Conner, and joined by Rehnquist, Kennedy and Breyer. Souter and Ginsberg wrote their own opinion, but joined the majority on the fact that U.S. Citizens should be given the right to challenge their classification as an enemy combatant. Now, how?s this for strange-bedfellows!? Scalia and Stevens wrote that the government only had two options: get congress to suspend the writ of habeas corpus (yeah, right) or that barring that, the government should charge him with treason, and proceed as normal through the court system on those charges.

I’m glad the court found that detainees have a right to at least plead their case; it does help promote the values we espouse here in America to the rest of the world. I mean, either they are prisoners of war, in which case, we need to follow the Geneva Convention, or they are criminals who should be processed through our legal system. I?m disappointed that the court found congress did give the president the power to declare people ?enemy combatants? but at least there is some remedy for them.

As for the Hamdi case, again, at least some of the rights of a U.S. Citizen are protected, and I suspect this will have some bearing on the Padilla case eventually as well, but I think Scalia and Stevens were correct: with a U.S. Citizen, he should be tried as a U.S. Citizen, and the government should have no rights to “reclassify” someone as an enemy combatant, essentially stripping them of their rights as an American.

Interesting cases?