[ OUR OPINION ]
Court rightly strips
U.S. of ‘tools of tyrants’PRESIDENTIAL power during times of war has been adjusted to an appropriate level by the U.S. Supreme Court. Two rulings allowing detained "enemy combatants" the right to judicial review were a major setback for the White House, but the resulting predicament is of the Bush administration's own making. The high court's decisions were a needed reminder that the Bill of Rights applies to all "persons," not just U.S. citizens, and cannot be easily shelved during a war.
THE ISSUE
The Supreme Court has ruled that "enemy combatants" detained by the U.S. government have a right to a court hearing.
In an 8-1 decision, the court ruled that Yaser Esam Hamdi, an American citizen captured in Afghanistan in 2001 and held in a brig in South Carolina, deserves "a meaningful opportunity to contest the factual basis for that detention before a neutral decision maker." By a 6-3 vote, the justices decided that even foreign enemy combatants held at the U.S. naval base at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, must be given the opportunity to challenge their detention in the U.S. courts.
The Guantánamo case involves nearly 600 foreign men captured in Afghanistan and Pakistan in the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001, attack on America. The Supreme Court rejected the government's contention that Guantánamo is beyond U.S. jurisdiction. The notion that the naval base is under Fidel Castro's jurisdiction is absurd.
Solicitor General Theodore B. Olson argued that the president needs "to use all necessary and appropriate force to deter and prevent acts of terrorism against the United States." While that is largely true, there are limits. Justice Sandra Day O'Connor made clear in the Hamdi case that "a state of war is not a blank check for the president when it comes to the rights of the nation's citizens."
Justice John Paul Stevens wrote for the majority in the Guantánamo case, "Aliens at the base, like American citizens, are entitled to invoke the federal courts' authority." Stevens went an important step further, stating that nothing in the law "excludes aliens detained in military custody outside the United States from the privilege of litigation in U.S. courts." That seems to preclude the possibility of the government moving the detainees from Guantánamo to another foreign country to avoid judicial review.
The ruling appears to have broadened a 1971 law barring detention of any U.S. citizen by the executive branch so that it applies to foreigners, even those arrested overseas, as long as they are held on soil controlled by the United States. Congress enacted the law after apologizing for the detention of Americans of Japanese descent during World War II.
Members of the Bush administration should take to heart Justice Stevens' admonition: "At stake in this case is nothing less than the essence of a free society. For if this nation is to remain true to the ideals symbolized by its flag, it must not wield the tools of tyrants even to resist an assault by the forces of tyranny."
