Saturday, July 01, 2006
Editorial: The Supreme Court reins in the president
In a long overdue rebuke, the judiciary rejected the notion that the commander-in-chief can conduct the war on terror however he wishes.
From the RoundTable blog
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Recognizing its "duty, in both peace and war, to preserve the constitutional safeguards of civil liberty," the U.S. Supreme Court forcefully reminded President Bush that the Constitution, with its brilliant system of checks and balances, still matters.
In a 5-3 ruling, justices found that the military tribunals set up to try detainees at Guantanamo Bay violate both American law and international treaties.
More important, they reaffirmed that both American law and international treaties still apply to President Bush's conduct of the war on terror -- a point he appears to have forgotten.
The case involved a habeas corpus appeal by Guantanamo detainee Salim Ahmed Hamdan, who was captured in Afghanistan in 2001. The government alleges that Hamdan was a driver and bodyguard for Osama bin Laden. Prosecutors had planned to try him on conspiracy charges before a special military commission established by President Bush in the wake of the 9/11 attacks.
Though the nominal reason for using the special commissions instead of existing military courts was the urgent need to extract intelligence from detainees, "there was another motive," retired Rear Adm. Donald Guter, the Navy's chief judge advocate general until June 2002, told the Los Angeles Times.
"This was seen as an opportunity, a vehicle to restore presidential power and authority," he said. "It was a very convenient vehicle. It was perfect. Fear tends to drive power to authority and to the executive branch."
The ruling, written by Justice John Paul Stevens, has broad ramifications beyond Guantanamo Bay.
It undercuts the administration's contention that a congressional "authorization for the use of military force" conferred virtually limitless authority on the president, which he has used to justify a secret program to tap the international phone calls of Americans, among other things.
Stevens also found that detainees are afforded at least some protection by the Geneva Conventions, directly countering the main administration justification for interrogation techniques that border on torture.
"Irregular interrogation policies are illegal in the wake of this opinion -- illegal, illegal, illegal," University of Texas law professor Derek P. Jinks told the Los Angeles Times.
The Supreme Court has served the rule of law well by delivering a long overdue rebuke to the notion that Bush may seize unilateral authority as commander-in-chief to conduct the war on terror as he sees fit -- in contemptuous disregard for Constitution, Congress and courts.
