International Herald Tribune commented Friday on US Supreme Court's ruling on Guantanamo detainees, saying in part: "For years, with the help of compliant Republicans and frightened Democrats in Congress, President George W. Bush has denied the protections of justice, democracy and plain human decency to the hundreds of men that he decided to label "unlawful enemy combatants" and throw into endless detention.
Twice the Supreme Court swatted back his imperial overreaching, and twice Congress helped Bush try to open a gaping loophole in the Constitution. On Thursday, the court turned back the most recent effort to subvert justice with a stirring defense of habeas corpus, the right of anyone being held by the government to challenge his confinement before a judge. By a 5-4 vote, the Supreme Court has affirmed the detainees' habeas rights. The majority, in an opinion by Justice Anthony Kennedy, ruled that the Military Commissions Act violates the Suspension Clause by eliminating habeas corpus although the requirements of the Constitution - invasion or rebellion - do not exist.
The court ruled that the military tribunals that are hearing the detainees' cases - the administration's weak alternative to habeas proceedings in a federal court - are not an adequate substitute. The hearings cut back on basic due process protections, like the right to counsel and the right to present evidence of innocence.
It was disturbing that four justices dissented from this eminently reasonable decision. The lead dissent, by Chief Justice John Roberts, dismisses habeas as "most fundamentally a procedural right." Roberts argued that the detainees receive such "generous" protections at their hearings that the court should not have worried about whether they had habeas rights.
There is an enormous gulf between the substance and tone of the majority opinion, with its rich appreciation of the liberties that the founders wrote into the Constitution, and the what-is-all-the-fuss-about dissent. It is sobering to think that habeas hangs by a single vote in the Supreme Court of the United States. The ruling is a major victory for civil liberties - but a timely reminder of how fragile they are."
