From GM over at ACE:
5-4 split, with the usual suspects. Kennedy wrote the majority opinion, which holds that alien unlawful combatants have constitutional habeas rights (as opposed to just a statutory habeas right) at Guantanamo Bay.
My quick glimpse says that the justices are engaged in the same "almost is good enough" analysis that they applied in Rasul in which they decided that Guantanamo Bay, though not technically U.S. territory, is close enough so that constitutional protections must apply.
It goes on to say that the Detainee Treatment Act and the Military Commissions Act did not provide adequate substitutes for habeas.
Oh, really? No one even tried, and the lower courts know it. Justice Kennedy, the majority opinion writer, got on his knees to agree with the terrorists that DTA or MCA was pointless to even try!
Instead, the court accepts the detainees argument that there is no possible way that the laws could be interpreted to provide an adequate substitute. The facial invalidation makes this an extraordinary opinion from Kennedy.
Justice Roberts wrote the minority report:
So who has won? Not the detainees. The Court’s analysis leaves them with only the prospect of further litigation to determine the content of their new habeas right, followed by further litigation to resolve their particular cases, followed by further litigation before the D. C. Circuit— where they could have started had they invoked the DTA procedure. Not Congress, whose attempt to “determine— through democratic means—how best” to balance the security of the American people with the detainees’ liberty interests, see Hamdan v. Rumsfeld, 548 U. S. 557, 636 (2006) (BREYER, J., concurring), has been unceremoniously brushed aside. Not the Great Writ, whose majesty is hardly enhanced by its extension to a jurisdictionally quirky outpost, with no tangible benefit to anyone. Not the rule of law, unless by that is meant the rule of lawyers, who will now arguably have a greater role than military and intelligence officials in shaping policy for alien enemy combatants. And certainly not the American people, who today lose a bit more control over the conduct of this Nation’s foreign policy to unelected, politically unaccountable judges.
I respectfully dissent.
GM over at ACE sums up the true short term effect that will have any meaning at all this year:
What is the immediate impact? Off the top of my head, the Supreme Court just did both presidential candidates a favor by mooting the question of closing Guantanamo Bay. If the detainees have access to U.S. courts, there's no reason to close the base and transfer them to the mainland U.S.
Ding. Ding! DING!! We have a winner.
Everyone & their dog talks about it here.
