1115.org

The Supreme Court has slapped down George Bush yet again over his treatment of Guantanamo detainees. This time around, they’ve found — despite conniptions by Justices Roberts and Scalia — that Guantanamo detainees do have the right to file habeas corpus petitions in civilian courts challenging their detention:

Terrorism suspects who are being held in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, have the right to contest their detention in federal courts, according to the U.S. Supreme Court.

“The justices, voting 5-4, said a 2006 law unconstitutionally stripped Guantanamo prisoners of the right to file so-called habeas corpus petitions,” Bloomberg News reports. “The majority rejected arguments that a system of limited judicial review set up by Congress was adequate to protect inmate rights.”

The Associated Press notes in its bulletin that this is the third time that the high court has ruled in favor of the 270 terrorism suspects who are being held without charge at the U.S. military facility.

Lyle Denniston, a veteran legal correspondent, writes at SCOTUSblog that the ruling is a “stunning blow to the Bush Administration in its ‘war-on-terrorism policies.”

Update at 10:22 a.m. ET: Writing for the majority, Justice Anthony Kennedy says: “The laws and Constitution are designed to survive, and remain in force, in extraordinary times.”

In dissent, Chief Justice John Roberts criticizes his colleagues for overruling “the most generous set of procedural protections ever afforded aliens detained by this country as enemy combatants.”

The majority in Boumediene v. Bush and Al-Odah v. United States included Justices John Paul Stevens, Stephen Breyer, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and David Souter.

Update at 10:39 a.m. ET: Scalia read his dissent from the bench. “The nation will live to regret what the court has done today,” he writes, according to Bloomberg News.

I predict that Scalia will receive a flood of emails telling him to “Get over it!”

AP adds:

The court said not only that the detainees have rights under the Constitution, but that the system the administration has put in place to classify them as enemy combatants and review those decisions is inadequate.

The administration had argued first that the detainees have no rights. But it also contended that the classification and review process was a sufficient substitute for the civilian court hearings that the detainees seek.

*** Update, 8:13 am ***

Here’s what Scalia apparently meant when he said “The nation will live to regret what the court has done today”:

In a dissent, Justice Antonin Scalia said the ruling would “almost certainly” cost some Americans their lives in the nation’s war against “radical Islamists.”

Personally, I think Scalia should have the sense to delegate such fear-mongering to Bushies. But I guess no one has ever accused this allegedly brilliant legal mind of having much common sense.

*** Update #2, 8:20 am ***
AFP adds this potentially explosive tidbit:

By a vote of five to four, the court found that even if the base was officially on Cuban territory, it was in fact operating as if it were on American soil and therefore the detainees had the same constitutional rights as all Americans.

If this is indeed a legal construction that can be placed on today’s opinion, all hell may be about to break loose. Because Guantanamo detainees sure as heck have not been treated in a manner consistent with the constitutional rights of all Americans. And a lot of this is on record. Including who did what and to whom. Under whose authority.

*** Update #3, 6:43 am on June 13***
AP’s headline reads: “Mukasey: Detainee ruling won’t stop terror trials”.

That’s only as it should be. Why shouldn’t the well-known dictum “The show must go on!” apply to show trials too?