Supreme Court condemns Guantanamo

At the very moment when Gordon Brown is pushing through a 42 day detention bill to hold suspected terrorists without charge - which many of us see as a direct assault on Habeas Corpus - the Supreme Court of the United States rebukes the actions of the Bush administration over suspects held at Guantanamo Bay and declares Section 7 of the Military Commissions Act of 2006 unconstitutional because it purported to abolish the writ of Habeas Corpus.

I wonder if Gordon has noticed?

This is the third time since 2004 that the Supreme Court have ruled against the Bush administration on this matter but, after each previous occasion, the Bush administration and Congress - controlled at that time by the Republicans - have changed the law to keep the detainees out of court.

Brushing aside arguments that the suspects were enemy combatants held at a time of war, the court said yesterday that the detainees had, "the constitutional privilege of habeas corpus", the right of detainees under the US constitution to have their cases heard by an independent judge or be freed. Justice Anthony Kennedy said: "The laws and constitution are designed to survive, and remain in force, in extraordinary times."

It really is a stunning blow against the argument which Bush and others have been advancing, that these men are prisoners of war and can be held until hostilities cease. The court has roundly rejected that argument and ruled that they must be tried before a court of law or released.

And the court was also dismissive of the John McCain sponsored Detainee Treatment Act of 2005:

In upholding the right of habeas corpus for Guantanamo detainees, the Court found that the "Combatant Status Review Tribunals" process ("CSRT") offered to Guantanamo detainees -- mandated by the John-McCain-sponsored Detainee Treatment Act of 2005 -- does not constitute a constitutionally adequate substitute for habeas corpus. To the contrary, the Court found that such procedures -- which have long been criticized as sham hearings due to the fact that defendants cannot have a lawyer present, government evidence is presumptively valid, and defendants are prevented from challenging (and sometimes even knowing about) much of the evidence against them -- "fall well short of the procedures and adversarial mechanisms that would eliminate the need for habeas corpus review." Those grave deficiencies in the CSRT process mean that "there is considerable risk of error" in the tribunals' conclusions.

The Court's ruling was grounded in its recognition that the guarantee of habeas corpus was so central to the Founding that it was one of the few individual rights included in the Constitution even before the Bill of Rights was enacted. As the Court put it: "the Framers viewed freedom from unlawful restraint as a fundamental precept of liberty, and they understood the writ of habeas corpus as a vital instrument to secure that freedom." The Court noted that freedom from arbitrary or baseless imprisonment was one of the core rights established by the 13th Century Magna Carta, and it is the writ of habeas corpus which is the means for enforcing that right. Once habeas corpus is abolished -- as the Military Commissions Act sought to do -- then we return to the pre-Magna Carta days where the Government is free to imprison people with no recourse.

I have long argued that, by refusing to acknowledge Habeas Corpus, Bush was - in effect - giving himself the powers of a King, which is what the court is noting when it hints that, to allow Bush's argument to stand, we would be returning to the days before the Magna Carta.

We have lived through extraordinary times during the Bush administration, times when they passed laws which go against the very fabric of the US Constitution, supported overwhelmingly by the Republican party and, shamefully, by some Democrats as well.

The Supreme Court quoted Alexander Hamilton's Federalist No 84:

"The practice of arbitrary imprisonments, in all ages, is the favorite and most formidable instruments of tyranny."

And that is what the Supreme Court has struck down: Tyranny. The Supreme Court has said that Bush had claimed for himself the powers of a tyrant and that he was wrong to do so.

Everyone who backed him as he attempted to do so should be deeply ashamed. For anyone, in any democracy, to argue that people can be imprisoned without trial or charge is simply an obscenity. The very notion that anyone can be imprisoned arbitrarily should be an affront to everyone who believes in the Democratic process.

Sometime, shortly after 9-11, America lost it's way and started making arguments and laws which went against the very ideals which were fundamental to its formation. And the people who forwarded those un-American arguments and laws were the very same people who questioned the patriotism of anyone who opposed them.

The Supreme Court has found their arguments and their laws to be fundamentally wrong.

The people currently held at Guantanamo Bay have great cause to celebrate, as they are now guaranteed their day in court. But all Americans should be celebrating the fact that the Supreme Court have loudly stated that no president can claim the powers of a tyrant as Bush has done.

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Tags: Supreme Court, George W Bush, Guantanamo Bay, Habeas Corpus, Magna Carta