High court vs. kangaroo justice
FOR THE THIRD time, the Supreme Court yesterday stood up for the rights of terrorism suspects imprisoned at Guantanamo, some for more than six years. Congress and the Bush administration should stop seeking extra-constitutional ways to justify the inmates' indefinite imprisonment and instead bring them to the mainland United States for courts-martial or federal criminal court proceedings.
"The laws and the Constitution," Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote in the opinion for the majority, "are designed to survive, and remain in force, in extraordinary times."
The court's 5-4 decision struck down a law passed by Congress in 2006 that gave detainees only a very limited right to appeal their classification as enemy combatants by US military officials at Guantanamo. The court said the prisoners should have their full habeas corpus rights to challenge their confinement before federal civilian courts.
Federal court review is especially important because, in the tribunals that have so far determined whether detainees are enemy combatants, the detainees have not had access to lawyers and could not see details of the evidence against them. The kangaroo-court qualities of the tribunals became clear last year in an affidavit by a former tribunal officer, Lieutenant Colonel Stephen Abraham. He said that when hearing officers found that an inmate had not been an enemy combatant, they were told to reconvene and hear more evidence.
Farcical proceedings like this have made Guantanamo an international byword for the US government's willingness to set aside centuries-old human-rights pillars like habeas corpus. Both Senators John McCain and Barack Obama have called for the closing of Guantanamo. But while Obama voted against the 2006 law stripping inmates of their habeas rights, McCain voted in favor of it. Also, McCain has said he would nominate judges to the Supreme Court along the lines of Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Samuel Alito, two Bush nominees who both voted in favor of the 2006 law yesterday.
Justice Kennedy is right to confirm that constitutional principles should not be sacrificed because of emergencies like Sept. 11. "Liberty and security can be reconciled," he wrote, "and in our system they are reconciled within the framework of the law." The government should demonstrate just how strong that framework is by using federal courts or military courts-martial to try any terrorism detainees accused of specific crimes.
