Military Tribunals Case Comes Before Supreme Court
By Justin Gardner | Related entries in Supreme Court, The War On TerrorismThey’re going to discuss the case of Salim Ahmed Hamdan:
WASHINGTON, Nov. 7 - The Supreme Court announced today that it would decide the validity of the military commissions that President Bush wants to use to bring detainees charged with terrorist offenses to trial.The case, to be argued in March, places the court back at the center of the national debate over the limits of presidential authority in conducting the war on terror. Last year, the Supreme Court rejected the administration’s position that the federal courts have no jurisdiction over people held as enemy combatants at the United States naval base at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.
This time, once again, the justices acted over the vigorous opposition of the administration, which urged the court to stay its hand and defer any review until after a detainee had been tried by a military commission and convicted.
This guy is alleged to be Osama bin Laden’s bodyguard/driver and he’s being charged with, among other things, terrorism. He’s been at Guantanamo since 2002. All indications say this guy is guilty, but what’s at issue now is whether the President can call military tribunals for a war with no end in sight.
However, we could have a 4 to 4 tie since Roberts won’t be able to hear the case.
The potential for a 4-to-4 tie may have been a reason for the apparent difficulty the other eight justices had in deciding whether to hear the case, an action that requires four votes. The case was listed for consideration at the justices’ first closed-door conference of the new term, on Sept. 26, and at every one of their subsequent weekly conferences, with no indication of the fate of the appeal until the court issued an order this morning granting the case and noting that “the chief justice took no part in the consideration or decision of this petition.”A tie vote affirms the lower court’s decision without setting a Supreme Court precedent. There are a number of interrelated issues in the case, and the court’s road map through them is not necessarily clear. At the threshold, Mr. Hamdan’s lawyers, Prof. Neal K. Katyal of Georgetown University Law Center and Lt. Cmdr. Charles Swift, argue that the president’s executive action establishing the military commissions was simply without authorization.
The lower court’s decision? Hamadan will go before the military tribunal, where the burden of proof is MUCH less than a court we’re accustomed to.
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November 8th, 2005 at 10:19 am
“The lower court’s decision? Hamadan will go before the military tribunal, where the burden of proof is MUCH less than a court we’re accustomed to. ”
But I bet the ‘burden of proof’ is much HIGHER than where he came from though!
November 8th, 2005 at 2:25 pm
Doesn’t matter debsay. But a valiant attempt to try and confuse the argument nonetheless.