Supreme Court Round-up (more Good than Bad)

[troublemaker]

Padilla - His habeas petition was filed in the wrong district. Remanded to correct lower court. GOOD insofar as habeas for 'enemy combatants' not struck down.

Hamdi - Gitmo is America so he has rights to a lawyer and access to courts. GOOD

Enemy Combatants - Declaring someone an EC is a Presidential power established in WWII. Congress gave President war powers after 9/11. There's nothing surprising about either of those... old news. What's significant is that the status of enemy combatants is subject to *Judicial Review* VERY GOOD - a real defeat for the administration's imperial theory of things.

On balance, the best we could hope for given the composition of the court.

http://news.search.yahoo.com/search/news/?p=supreme+source%3Ayahoo&datesort=1&ei=UTF-8

[papau]

1. Excellent - the AP had a muddled report this morning.

Thanks for clearing it up.

:-)

[KittyWampus]

2. One More Time- THIS IS WHAT THE JAGS WANTED

go to the link below and read the freaking article.

Hamdi is mentioned before the following:

"Sometime before the end of this month, the Supreme
Court is expected to hand down its decision in al
Odah. It is considered very unlikely that a majority of
justices will accept the broad argument put forward
by the civilian attorneys that Guantánamo Bay should
be condered part of the United States and that
detainees should thus be entitled to full habeas corpus
rights.

That leaves two more probable alternatives. The
court could either side with the administration and
recognize the exclusive right of the commander in
chief to call the shots during times of war. Or it could
recognize the view advanced by the JAG's -- that
when it comes to adjudicating matters of guilt and
innocence, the military must not operate on its terms
alone. The latter course would enable Swift and
Katyal's lawsuit against Rumsfeld and the president to
move forward.

Yet even if the lawsuit proceeds and Swift and
Katyal prevail, it could be years before the
administration exhausts its appeals. In the meantime,
the government has no incentive to bring Hamdan to
trial before a military tribunal. In the unlikely event
that it does and Swift manages to win an acquittal, the
peculiar rules of the tribunals still permit the
administration to hold him indefinitely in solitary
confinement as an enemy combatant.

''The International Committee for the Red Cross says
that one of the great problems with Guantánamo is its
undefined nature,'' Swift says. ''I now appreciate that.
My life is now one of uncertainty. I don't know when
this will end. That's a very disquieting place to be.''

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/13/magazine/13MILITARY.html?ex=1088568000&en=fdbab902670b2014&ei=5070&pagewanted=all&position=