Justices, 5-3, Broadly Reject Bush Plan to Try Detainees - New York Times
Justices, 5-3, Broadly Reject Bush Plan to Try Detainees - New York Times
There is no doubt that history is being made on 29 June 2006, when the Supreme Court in HAMDAN v. RUMSFELD “repudiated the Bush administration’s plan to put Guantánamo detainees on trial before military commissions, ruling broadly that the commissions were unauthorized by federal statute and violated international law.”
Or, simply put, the court ruled that the govt was not above the law.
And it is a fine decision, although i’d admit that the dissents were powerfully argued. In particular, Clarence Thomas’s dissent is remarkable:
Justice Thomas’s dissent addressed the substance of the court’s conclusions. In a part of his opinion that Justices Scalia and Alito also signed, he called the decision “untenable” and “dangerous.” He said “those justices who today disregard the commander in chief’s wartime decisions” had last week been willing to defer to the judgment of the Army Corps of Engineers in a Clean Water Act case. “It goes without saying that there is much more at stake here than storm drains,” he said.
But yes, there is far more at stake than storm drains. The value of the rule of law vs the power of the govt. And it has been a victory of the rule of law.
And, has has been argued, Hamdan does not bind the president’s hands, but rather:
“What the Court has done is not so much countermajoritarian as democracy forcing. It has limited the President by forcing him to go back to Congress to ask for more authority than he already has, and if Congress gives it to him, then the Court will not stand in his way“
In any case, i’m wont to agree with Mahler that it is a fine decision
