This post made possible by the New Medievalism research team.
I was pretty surprised today at the U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Hamadan–I honestly didn’t expect this court to deny Bush anything, much less make a decent ruling.
Here’s a snippet from the AP story:
Supreme Court blocks Bush, Gitmo war trials
WASHINGTON – The Supreme Court ruled Thursday that President Bush overstepped his authority in ordering military war crimes trials for Guantanamo Bay detainees.
The ruling, a rebuke to the administration and its aggressive anti-terror policies, was written by Justice John Paul Stevens, who said the proposed trials were illegal under U.S. law and international Geneva conventions.
Law geeks can get the entire 185-page opinion in PDF format.
If you do read it, be sure to check out Clarence Thomas’ dissent. That guy is nuts.
This is what the Globe had to say about the dissent, in their piece on the ruling:
Justice Clarence Thomas wrote a strongly-worded dissent, saying the court’s decision would “sorely hamper the president’s ability to confront and defeat a new and deadly enemy.”
The court’s willingness, Justice Thomas said, “to second-guess the determination of the political branches that these conspirators must be brought to justice is both unprecedented and dangerous.”
My immediate reaction to that would be something along the lines of “Are you stupid, or just disingenuous? The court is not second-guessing the determination to pursue justice, they are second-guessing the Administration’s chosen means of pursuit. The two things are worlds apart.”
Alex pointed me at the Scotusblog writeup on the ruling, which includes this happy-making bit:
This almost certainly means that the CIA’s interrogation regime is unlawful, and indeed, that many techniques the Administation has been using, such as waterboarding and hypothermia (and others) violate the War Crimes Act (because violations of Common Article 3 are deemed war crimes).
If I’m right about this, it’s enormously significant.
A similarly pleasing analysis of the potential ramifications can be found at Unclaimed Territory, where Glenn says:
This is a clearly fatal blow to one of the two primary arguments invoked by the administration to justify its violations of FISA. The administration has argued that this same AUMF “implicitly” authorized it to eavesdrop in violation of the mandates of FISA, even though the AUMF said absolutely nothing about FISA or eavesdropping. If — as the Supreme Court today held — the AUMF cannot be construed to have provided implicit authorization for the administration to create military commissions in violation of the UCMJ, then it is necessarily the case that it cannot be read to have provided implicit authorization for the administration to eavesdrop in violation of FISA.
Of course, the cynical side of me wonders if it will matter at all. I can see GWB going all Andrew Jackson and busting out the “they have made their decision, now let them enforce it” line.
Oh, and can we please make sure that Stevens gets the best possible medical care… I need that guy to make it to 88 at least.
