DLC :Terrorist Suspects and the Rule of Law

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DLC | New Dem Dispatch | July 12, 2006
Terrorist Suspects and the Rule of Law

The June 29 U.S. Supreme Court decision in the case of Hamdan v. Rumsfeld definitively put to rest Bush administration arguments that it was free to keep terrorist suspects in a perpetual legal limbo, in reliance on a vague and pervasive doctrine of inherent presidential national security powers.

This was an important decision on both constitutional and public policy grounds. But its immediate impact will be to rouse Congress to exercise its own lawmaking responsibilities with respect to the war against jihadist terrorism. Fortunately, there appears to be strong bipartisan sentiment in Congress to create a legal regime for treatment of terrorist suspects based on a modified version of military courts-martial, with due exceptions made for the unusual nature of suspected enemy combatants in highly unconventional warfare. It is essential that Congress act to create this new legal regime and put an end to the ongoing damage to U.S. prestige the administration's position fostered, with a minimum of partisan posturing.

As the Progressive Policy Institute's Kevin Croke explained on the day after the Hamdan decision, the Court has clearly repudiated the administration's claim that the president's national security powers trump legislative and judicial oversight in the treatment of terrorist suspects:




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