Supreme Court to Bush: You’re not above the law

For the third time in four summers, the U.S. Supreme Court has slammed the Bush administration’s detention policies at Guantánamo Bay — locking up terrorist suspects indefinitely and beyond the law. And this time, some real progress might even come out of it. In a 5-4 decision drafted by Justice Anthony Kennedy, the court ruled in Boumediene v. Bush that Guantánamo detainees have a constitutional right to habeas corpus — that is, to challenge the legal basis for their detention in a federal court.

Let’s be clear, the decision doesn’t do a number of things. It doesn’t shut down Guantánamo. It doesn’t order all detainees who have not been charged with an offense to be released. And besides saying that the detainees are entitled to a “prompt habeas hearing,” it doesn’t even say what factors the courts should consider when deciding whether the U.S. government can hold them… www.salon.com

Posted by John Malloy on 06/13/2008. Filed under International. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry