SCOTUS Rebukes Bush (Again)

In a US Supreme Court decision Boumediene v. Bush, issued this morning, Justice Kennedy wrote for the 5-4 majority that Gitmo detainees captured on foreign soil are entitled to the “great writ”of Habeas Corpus. The result in Boumediene is a blow to the Bush administration’s "war-on-terrorism" policies which ignore the Constitution.

John McCain has promised to nominate as Supeme Court Justices those who are cut from the same judicial robes as Chief Justice Roberts and Justice Alito, both of whom dissented, endorsing instead the notion that the government can indefinitely detain anyone without any check from the courts.

Some quotes to consider:

Security depends upon a sophisticated intelligence apparatus and the ability of our Armed Forces to act and to interdict. There are further considerations, however. Security subsists, too, in fidelity to freedom’s first principles. Chief among these are freedom from arbitrary and unlawful restraint and the personal liberty that is secured by adherence to the separation of powers. It is from these principles that the judicial authority to consider petitions for habeas corpus relief derives. ...

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Within the Constitution’s separation-of-powers structure, few exercises of judicial power are as legitimate or as necessary as the responsibility to hear challenges to the authority of the Executive to imprison a person. Some of these petitioners have been in custody for six years with no definitive judicial determination as to the legality of their detention. Their access to the writ is a necessity to determine the lawfulness of their status, even if, in the end, they do not obtain the relief they seek.

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The laws and Constitution are designed to survive, and remain in force, in extraordinary times. Liberty and security can be reconciled; and in our system they are reconciled within the framework of the law. The Framers decided that habeas corpus, a right of first importance, must be a part of that framework, a part of that law.