Was the U.S. Supreme Court correct last week when it ruled that Guantanamo Bay detainees have habeas corpus rights?
Over at U.S. News, we asked a pair of legal experts to critique the decision.
Jack Balkin, a Yale law professor who also blogs at Balkinization, praises the decision.
Over a four-year period, the Supreme Court has repeatedly pushed back at this strategy. Each time it has left the president the option of taking political responsibility and publicly calling for suspension of habeas corpus. Each time the president has chosen subterfuge instead.
Coming from the opposite side, Glenn Sulmasy, a national security and human rights fellow at Harvard's K-School says the decision was a huge mistake.
As a result of this case, Guantánamo Bay detainees now formally have more rights than do prisoners of war under the Geneva Conventions. To say the least, citizens, regardless of political affiliation or views of the status of Guantánamo, should be concerned about the ramifications of this decision.
Click here to read the full versions of both articles.
That was BushCo's idea to invent a new class of humans: "illegal enemy combatants". It was BushCo's idea to make them not-POWs and not-"protected persons", both of which are dealt with in the Geneva Conventions. It was BushCo's idea to proclaim that the Geneva Conventions and all other international laws don't apply to the detainees.
You can't have your cake & eat it, too. If you insist they are not POWs and not protected persons as described in the Geneva Conventions, then they are merely citizens of other countries who have been kidnapped and imprisoned without charge and with no prospect of a resolution. That's illegal the world over. Habeas corpus is a basic, universal human right which can't be simply brushed off as irrelevant just because Cheney and Bush have a criminal enterprise underway.