A Narrow Victory Foir Justice
June 12th, 2008
By a 5-4 vote, the Constitution has survived another day:
The Supreme Court has ruled that foreign terrorism suspects held at Guantanamo Bay have rights under the U.S. Constitution to challenge their detention in civilian courts.
The justices, in a 5-4 ruling Thursday, handed the Bush administration its third setback at the high court since 2004 over its treatment of prisoners who are being held indefinitely and without charges at the U.S. naval base in Cuba.
“We hold these petitioners do have the habeas corpus privilege,” Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote for the court majority in the 70-page opinion.
To be clear here, the Administration is claiming that it can arbitrarily decided who gets a trial or a hearing before a judge and who does not. By arguing that these people do not have rights to a trial, the Bush Administration is claiming that they have the right to detain people and then decide who gets to hear their appeals and even whether or not to allow them to appeal their detention in the first place. That is unjust and immoral and it is a direct assault on the constitution’s protections. Foreigners in this country are entitiled to the same rights and protections as US citizens when charged with a crime. It is ludicrous to believe that should change on either just the Executive’s say so or becasue of the location of the prison. Someone held by the federal government is held by the federal government whether they are in Alabama, Gitmo, or the moon.
If these people are prisoners of war, then treat them as such. If they are not, then they are criminals and should be treated the same as every other criminal in the care of the federal government. Inventing a third class of people that the executive gets to do with as they please cannot be an option under our constitution.
Categories: General, Legal Issues | 13 Comments
