Justice Antonin Scalia [merged]

[Kulindahr]

Well, another pet federal court has handed Bush what he paid for:

Guantanamo Inmates' Suits Rejected by Appeals Court (Update4)

By Jeff St.Onge

Feb. 20 (Bloomberg) -- A U.S. appeals court threw out lawsuits by hundreds of inmates challenging their detention at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, giving the Bush administration a victory in its handling of ``enemy combatants'' in the war on terrorism.

The court upheld a military-tribunal law signed Oct. 17 by President George W. Bush that bars the inmates from pursuing their claims in federal trial courts. Today's ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit applies to detainees who haven't been charged with a crime -- the vast majority of about 400 inmates held at the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay.

``Federal courts have no jurisdiction in these cases,'' Judge A. Raymond Randolph wrote for the majority in the 2-1 ruling in Washington. The detainees' arguments ``are creative but not cogent,'' he said. ``To accept them would be to defy the will of Congress.''

The Military Commissions Act requires inmates to go through a military review with a limited right of appeal to the D.C. Circuit court, a process the appeals court said provides adequate protection for detainees' constitutional rights. The Guantanamo prison has drawn international criticism since it opened in 2002 to house suspected terrorists captured after the Sept. 11 attacks. Bush has repeatedly said he would like to close it.

The opinion by Randolph, an appointee of President George H.W. Bush, was joined by Judge David Sentelle, nominated by President Ronald Reagan. Judge Judith W. Rogers, appointed by President Bill Clinton, dissented, saying she would let the cases proceed in civilian court.

Will `Seek Review'

``We certainly do intend to seek review in the Supreme Court,'' said David J. Cynamon, a lawyer for the detainees, in an interview. He said he thinks the high court will agree to hear the case given ``the huge national importance and significant precedent'' of today's ruling.

``We also hope this will give added impetus to the effort in Congress to restore'' detainees' rights to challenge their detention, Cynamon said.

Justice Department spokesman Erik Ablin said in a statement that the ruling ``reaffirms the validity of the framework that Congress established.''

The Military Commissions Act also set up tribunals for trials of detainees who have been charged with a crime, such as Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who is accused of being the mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks.

Transferred to Guantanamo

Mohammed and 13 other accused al-Qaeda operatives were transferred to Guantanamo Bay from secret Central Intelligence Agency prisons. Today's ruling doesn't affect plans to put them on trial.

Congress approved the military-tribunal law after the Supreme Court ruled in June that Bush lacked legal authority to try detainees on war-crimes charges in tribunals.

Rogers's dissent said the D.C. Circuit could reach its conclusion ``only by misreading the historical record and ignoring the Supreme Court's well-considered and binding'' language.

``The dissenting opinion will be upheld because the Supreme Court has already ruled that detainees have habeas corpus rights'' even at Guantanamo, said Senator Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, the Judiciary Committee's top Republican, in a statement. ``While it will take the Supreme Court at least a year to decide the issue, the Congress could resolve it promptly by enacting the Leahy/Specter bill'' restoring detainees' rights.

Denied Rights

Within hours after Bush signed the new law, his administration filed a letter at the appeals court arguing that the measure stripped the Guantanamo detainees who haven't been charged with a crime of the right to go to court.

Justice Department attorneys said the new law is clear and that there was no question that Congress took away the detainees' right to a trial court review. The military review procedure is an ``adequate substitute'' that provides more rights than the detainees would receive in federal trial courts, government lawyers said.

Lawyers for the detainees argued that the law is vague and unconstitutional. In court papers, they said the law didn't take away their right to pursue their cases, and that any law that did so would violate the Constitution.

In a separate case, a judge in Washington on Dec. 13 threw out a detention challenge by Osama bin Laden's former driver, Salim Ahmed Hamdan, who is being held at Guantanamo Bay. U.S. District Judge James Robertson said the military-tribunal law barred federal courts from hearing the case. Hamdan won the Supreme Court ruling in June that led Congress to enact the new law.

Confinement Challenged

The Supreme Court ruled in 2004 that inmates at Guantanamo could go to federal court to challenge their confinement. After the cases were sent back to a federal trial court in Washington, two judges issued conflicting rulings on whether the inmates could continue to pursue their claims.

The D.C. Circuit hadn't ruled on appeals of those cases when Bush signed the new law.

The case is: Boumediene v. Bush, 05-5062, consolidated with Al-Odah v. United States, 05-5064, U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.


I can't figure out what part of "habeus corpus shall not be denied" they don't understand?

 

[naked gent]

Re: I bet Scalia can't wait.....

^^ You do understand seapuppy that they are not required to prove that they are enemy combatants engaged in acts of war against our country they mearly have to say it.

I guess thats the part that gives some of us pause.

 

[Roland00]

Re: I bet Scalia can't wait.....

I guess the part in the Constitution where it says that it applies to non-uniformed enemy combatants engaged in acts of war against our country.

Funny, I can't seem to find that anywhere in the Constitution either...

...Good job appeals court...​

Where in the constitution does the Right of Haebus Corpus differentiates from citizens, non citizens, enemy combatants etc.

Answer it doesn't say.

The privilege of the writ of habeas corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in cases of rebellion or invasion the public safety may require it.

The reason why it doesn't say it, is because the "privilege" was seen as a universal natural right. It has been seen this way in English Law and Philosophy since for almost 580 years at that time (now its almost 800 years).

 

[Andross]

Re: I bet Scalia can't wait.....

It's a shame that the courts in the U.S. are too impotent to do the right thing and force this black mark on America's image to be closed. Guantanamo shouldn't exist in the first place. The utter and shameless disregard by the U.S. of human rights and all that democracy and law stands for is appalling. Concentration camps were bad during WW2. That they now have U.S. flags waving over them in different places in the world puts the U.S. in the same position as the Nazis or the terrorists they so blindly hunt. Sadly the U.S. administration doesn't care about the world-wide criticism these secret prisons, secret abductions of other nation's citizens and human rights violations provoke. As usual, I guess. And just another stepping stone in the downfall of the U.S. as the former "leader of the free world".

 

[Roland00]

Re: I bet Scalia can't wait.....

I am not a fan of gitmo either, but in my mind you went too far comparing them to Concentration Camps. I still see them as a shame and a mark on our record.

But hey that is just me.

 

[Andross]

Re: I bet Scalia can't wait.....

The terrorist comparison means that they disregard human rights, behead their POWs and want to prevent Iraq from becoming a truly democratic country. If the U.S. lowers itself to their level by doing similar things (i.e. randomly abducting people, keeping prisoners without trial for years, torturing them in their secret prisons, starting wars based on lies, etc.) then there is no moral highground for the U.S. to justify their quest to bring democracy to the unfree people of the Middle East. Without mankind viewing such an endeavour as just and justified, then it is doomed to fail. We can see the results in Afghanistan and Iraq today.

While Gitmo may not be a direct copy of a Nazi concentration camp, the words "concentration camp" come closest to describing what it is. There may not be gas chambers nor does the U.S. indiscriminately kill their prisoners, but torture is not uncommon. Depriving people who are largely innocents, of their freedoms and torturing them, is no less a crime as the concentration camps during WW2 were.

A democratic nation who claims to be "western" and "free", should never allow such things to happen. That the judical system of the U.S. is largely accomplice to enabling the U.S. administration to do these things, shows how impotent the so-called "checks and balances" of a true democracy are in the U.S. It is a systemic problem, that neither congress nor the courts have the will to stop these crimes, which are being committed by the U.S. administration in the name of the American people. A lot of the world-wide resentment against America is based on these things.

 

[Kulindahr]

Re: I bet Scalia can't wait.....

The trouble is that it's democracy which enabled this to happen -- when a leader thinks he/she has a "mandate", laws become things to be twisted and made to mean what is useful at the time, not what the words say. Our law schools today actively teach that the practice of law is about making the words mean what one wishes them to (e.g. Yale).
This is why Benjamin Franklin emphasized a constitutional Republic where the highest value is liberty -- thus the "well-armed lamb disputing the result of the vote". A Republic has checks and balances; a democracy has only the "will of the people" -- and then the will of the elected, however foolish the people may have been in electing them.
We need to return to being the Republic for which the flag stands -- where there's a Constitution and a deep-seated conviction that individual liberty trumps the majority will, where human rights are acknowledged as inherent, and not something granted by law.

 

[Kulindahr]

Re: I bet Scalia can't wait.....

Fuck the flag 'for which it stands'---it's stated explicitly in the Constitution itself. The problem began with the executive branch. I bet you think President Ron Paul would solve this problem, huh?

I know it's stated explicitly; don't go off the handle over a bit of rhetoric.

Ron Paul would manage to go a lot farther than anyone else on the table to do anything about bringing back liberty. But if the Congress stays Democrat, he'll only have maneuvering room in one direction; if it goes back to being Republican, he'll have only maneuvering room in another direction; if we get a split Congress...

 

[Roland00]

Re: I bet Scalia can't wait.....

Actually it does...

Article One, Section 9 which states:

“ The privilege of the writ of habeas corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in cases of rebellion or invasion the public safety may require it. ”

You are confusing issues. Saying that unlawful combatants don't have the right to Haebus is different than saying that right can be taken away "when in the case of..."

The right of Haebus applies to all people. Period.

Now in times of war that right can be taken away, I never said it couldn't. But there is a certain process you go thorugh to take the right away. Second notice the word may, just because we are at war doesn't mean the book goes out the window. You have to follow certain process about removing the right + you have to show why removing the right is neccessary.

 

[Roland00]

Re: I bet Scalia can't wait.....

^ Unless and until the American people decide otherwise, CBS News will not be my determining source as to who is a threat to my country. We charge the armed forces with that responsibility on the battlefield. If one interviews the detainees at GITMO, guess how many of them are innocent? 100%! Surprise! No thanks. I will continue to trust the armed forces to make that determination. Far more "innocent" detainees have been re-picked up on battlefields engaged in war against us, than have ever been mistakenly taken. Mistakes are inevitable, but this is NOT a criminal proceeding. These are NOT criminals entitled to rights or the rules of civil law. They are NOT soldiers entitled to military trial. They are terrorist. They have a right to face a firing squad, unless we say otherwise in my opinion, and that's about it. That is still much more mercy and humanity than they show OUR men and women they capture. It is not Mr. Bush who is "inventing' legal precedent here, but the opponents of age old military and legal consensus.

Thing is not all the "terrorists" at gitmo were found in the battlefield. A lot of them were the result of blanket bounties. The US was given 10,000 dollars to people in Afghanistan if they turn in anybody connected to al-qaeda. Of course these bounties didn't have any proof x and x is part of al-qaeda. Thus we are just taking the word of a person who we paid several year sallary that person X and X is a terrorist.

Don't get me wrong several people in Gitmo are very evil men and should be locked up and never be allowed out. Thing is we have mixed the good people with the bad people and we can't even tell the difference anymore.

 

[OtterJoq]

Re: I bet Scalia can't wait.....

Remember when being an American was a source of pride, not of shame?

 

[naked gent]

Re: I bet Scalia can't wait.....

seapuppy I think roland hits it on the head. If it were true that those at gitmo had been picked up by U.S. forces on the battlefield then your point would be stronger but the fact is that the majority of those being held there were handed over to us by the Northan Alliance and the Pakistan army and secret police.

There's a big difference between those who are engaged in battle with you and those who are handed over to you by a third party whose motivations may not be identical to yours.

I understand that for that group of captives it would probably be impossible to prove much about them or their activities against us but I don't think we should pretend we're living up to our professed values when we are not.

 

[Kulindahr]

Re: I bet Scalia can't wait.....

Seapuppy, you averred that if we interviewed those held at Guantanamo, they'd all be innocent.
That's not true -- more than a few of them are proud that they've inflicted, or attempted to inflict, harm on the United States or its soldiers. That's true in prisons, too; people are always saying that everyone in prison says they're innocent, but many actually are proud of their crimes.
I think the problem here is that it hasn't been demonstrated that these are all illegal enemy combatants -- or even that the rules for that apply, to some degree. Ignore the investigations of CBS as you will, but they are quite good at that. and as has been pointed out, there's a need for demonstrating that they're illegal enemy combatants before they're treated as such.
And if you want to be truly picky... does any of that apply, since this isn't a declared war?

 

[Kulindahr]

Re: I bet Scalia can't wait.....

If it doesn't apply to all people, then it isn't a right at all.
Is that your contention, seapuppy?

 

[Roland00]

Re: I bet Scalia can't wait.....

No, it doesn't. I don't know how much more clear I can be. I have posted the exact article and clause of the Constitution where IT says habeas does not apply. Habeas has NEVER applied to enemy soldiers on the battlefield. Never. I have sited SCOTUS cases where they have ruled that Habeas does not apply. In ALL of those cases the government was not required to issue a suspension decree. It simply did not apply. There is not a single case, until our recent military action, where Habeas was even considered to apply to those actively engaged in combat with us. Even in the case I cited, it referred to German POW's.

Are they enemy soliders or are they enemy combantats? I am trying to understand your logic, the term seems to change when ever it is most benefical to your opinion.?

 

[Andross]

Re: I bet Scalia can't wait.....

 

[Kulindahr]

Re: I bet Scalia can't wait.....

No,

My contention is that it has never applied to non-uniformed, enemy combatants. EVER.

This is from the Unites States Senate concerning this debate...

“Habeas corpus” is a writ employed to bring a person before a court to determine whether
his detention is legal.11 The U.S. Constitution provides: “The privilege of the writ of habeas corpus
shall not be suspended, unless when in cases of rebellion or invasion the public safety may require
it.”12 While habeas corpus cannot be suspended except in limited circumstances, there is no
constitutional requirement that it ever apply to non-citizen enemy combatants.

So you don't believe it's a right?
Rights are universal, and they belong to everyone without exception. So I'm still not clear on whether you believe this is a right.

 

[Roland00]

Re: I bet Scalia can't wait.....

It is the same thing. The term "enemy combatant" is the legal term. It is meant to cover, not just the soldiers of an established government, but an organized and or uniformed force, that meet certain criteria, of non-governments as well. i.e., the Vietmihn as an example. You are aware, that in our language, words like, "enemy combatant", "enemy soldier", "opposition forces", are all perfectly interchangeable?

The other term, which covers the terrorist we fight, is "unlawful combatant".

In your common parlay it may mean the same, but legally there is a huge difference between the words.

Regardless I am not going to convince you otherwise, so good day seapuppy.

 

[Roland00]

Re: I bet Scalia can't wait.....

"The privilege of the writ of habeas corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in cases of rebellion or invasion the public safety may require it."

The word privilege has a specific legal meaning when used in that context. In layman term it is identical to a right. See Article IV Section 2 of the constiution and the 14th ammendment which was written 90 years later and use almost identical language.

 

[ryankeith]

Re: I bet Scalia can't wait.....

Let's use another article from your favorite souce on the subject.

From CBSNews...

Gitmo Detainees Return To Terror
7 Ex-Prisoners Allegedly Violated Pledge To Renounce Violence

WASHINGTON, Oct. 17, 2004
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
(CBS/AP)


Quote

Some 146 detainees have been released from Guantanamo, but only after U.S. officials had determined the prisoners no longer posed threats and had no remaining intelligence value.

U.S. military officials say that despite being freed in exchange for signing pledges to renounce violence, at least seven former prisoners of the United States at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, have returned to terrorism, at times with deadly consequences.

At least two are believed to have died in fighting in Afghanistan, and a third was recaptured during a raid of a suspected training camp in Afghanistan, said Lt. Cmdr. Flex Plexico, a Pentagon spokesman. Others are at large.

Additional former detainees are said to have expressed a desire to rejoin the fight, be it against U.N. peacekeepers in Afghanistan, Americans in Iraq or Russian soldiers in Chechnya.

Some 146 detainees have been released from Guantanamo, but only after U.S. officials had determined the prisoners no longer posed threats and had no remaining intelligence value.

Pentagon officials acknowledged that the release process is imperfect, but they said most of the Guantanamo detainees released have steered clear of Islamic insurgent groups.

Those poor innocent lambs...

wow....7 out of 146 returned to "terrorist" activities, 2 of which they believe have died in fighting, but obviously don't know. So really only 5. This really doesn't support you position very well SeaPuppy. 139 of them appaerantly had no issues.

As far as these people rejoining the fight or getting into it on being released...well how do you know they were ever part of it to begin with? I guess if I was held for 4 or more years and didn't know why and was tortured or treated like shit, I met have some reservations and anger towards my captures, wouldn't you?