June 29, 2004|By Gail Gibson | Gail Gibson,SUN NATIONAL STAFF
The Supreme Court delivered a strong check to the president's wartime powers yesterday, ruling in two closely watched cases that U.S. citizens and foreign nationals imprisoned as suspected terrorists can challenge their detention in American courts.
"We have long since made clear that a state of war is not a blank check for the president when it comes to the rights of the nation's citizens," Justice Sandra Day O'Connor wrote for the majority opinion in one case. The Constitution, she said, "most assuredly envisions a role for all three branches when individual liberties are at stake."
Taken together, the rulings upended a central, and controversial, element of the Bush administration's war on terror - the notion that suspected terrorists can be held indefinitely for interrogation purposes without access to the courts. Both decisions were by a 6-3 vote, but the lineup of the justices varied.
About 600 men detained without recourse for the past two years at the military prison camp at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, now could have a day in court. U.S. citizens held as "enemy combatants" also are entitled to legal review, the justices ruled in the case of a Louisiana-born man captured in Afghanistan in late 2001 and held without charges or trial at the Navy brig in Charleston, S.C.
In a third, related case involving American citizen Jose Padilla, the court in a 5-4 decision sidestepped questions about his detention by determining his case was brought in the wrong jurisdiction. Justice John Paul Stevens, in a dissent, chastised the majority for relying on that technicality to avoid more important issues.
"At stake in this case is nothing less than the essence of a free society," Stevens wrote. "For if this nation is to remain true to the ideals symbolized by its flag, it must not wield the tools of tyrants even to resist an assault by the forces of tyranny."
In one significant finding for the administration, the justices ruled that Congress had given President Bush the power to seize and detain U.S. citizens as "enemy combatants." But the court, in careful and narrowly written decisions, showed deep concern about unchecked executive-branch power.
"Striking the proper constitutional balance here is of great importance to the nation during this period of ongoing combat," O'Connor wrote in the enemy combatant case of Yaser Esam Hamdi. "But it is equally vital that our calculus not give short shrift to the values that this country holds dear or to the privilege that is American citizenship."
The cases raised the most fundamental constitutional questions to emerge from the government's counter-terrorism campaign, with the justices asked to weigh the balance between individual freedoms and national security.
"I think that basically it was a very bad day for the Bush administration, but not a completely bad day," said University of Maryland law professor Michael Greenberger, a former Justice Department official. "The court today made it emphatically clear that they do have a role to play."
A broad coalition of civil libertarians and former federal prosecutors and judges had challenged the administration's detention policies as an unwarranted extension of executive power. But the government's lawyers defended the methods as legally sound and badly needed in the often murky battle against terrorism.
In response to the rulings, White House spokeswoman Claire Buchan said President Bush was committed to fashioning a review process for terror detainees that would address the issues raised by the court decisions. "The president's most solemn obligation is to protect the American people," she said.
At the Justice Department, spokesman Mark Corallo praised the court's decision on enemy combatant status, saying that "without the ability to detain these dangerous individuals, the American people and our soldiers in combat would face even greater danger from our terrorist enemies."
Corallo said the department was reviewing the rulings and noted that the court acknowledged access to the courts in some terror cases may require some modifications, such as the admission of hearsay evidence.
Groups that had challenged the administration claimed an important win.
Michael Ratner, president of the Center for Constitutional Rights, which brought the Guantanamo case, said the rulings affirmed "the right of every person, citizen or non-citizen, detained by the United States to test the legality of his or her detention in a U.S. court."
The legal director for the American Civil Liberties Union, Steven R. Shapiro, said that the "historic rulings are a strong repudiation of the administration's argument that its actions in the war on terrorism are beyond the rule of law and unreviewable by American courts."
Left unclear was what would come next, particularly in the case of Guantanamo Bay detainees.
