The Supreme Court has again rejected the Bush administration’s dealings with terrorism suspects being held at Guantanamo Bay, ruling that the detainees have the constitutional right to challenge their detention in U.S. federal courts.
In the 5-4 ruling issued Thursday, justices said it was unconstitutional for the Military Commissions Act of 2006 to eliminate the federal court’s jurisdiction to hear cases in which Guantanamo prisoners challenged their detentions.
Bush administration officials argued that detainees had been provided an alternative recourse through a review tribunal created by the 2005 Detainee Treatment Act.
But Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, who wrote the majority opinion, said the tribunal “falls short of being a constitutionally adequate substitute” because it does not allow a detainee to present evidence or withholds such evidence from the tribunal’s consideration until after his case has been heard.
The Bush administration began holding suspected terrorists in the United States’ Guantanamo Bay facility soon after 9/11 because Justice Department lawyers had advised Bush that federal courts would have no jurisdiction over those imprisoned there.
The Supreme Court ruled in 2004 that because the United States had sole control of the Guantanamo facility the federal courts did have jurisdiction there.
President Bush said Thursday he would abide by the court’s decision but “that doesn’t mean I have to agree with it.” Justice Antonin Scalia, who wrote one of the two dissenting opinions, said the ruling would have “devastating and disastrous consequences.”
But revoking or diluting the judicial protections and due process afforded by the U.S. Constitution could be truly disastrous. As Kennedy noted, even though the nation is at war, “the laws and Constitution are designed to survive, and remain in force, in extraordinary times.”
Bush has sought to make promoting democracy a hallmark of his tenure, but such efforts ring hollow as the president presses to strip due process rights from people detained by the U.S. government. A fair and open judicial process is a cornerstone of a democratic nation.
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