No More No-Man’s Zone 0
The Guardian:
In one sense, the decision in Boumediene v Bush is a limited one. It does not order the release of a single prisoner – indeed, no prisoner has been released by court order in the six years that men have been held at Guantanamo. Nor does it address the scope of the President’s authority to hold individuals as “enemy combatants,” what procedural protections they are owed, or how they should be treated. It simply opens the courthouse door. Six years after Guantanamo opened, detainees will finally get their day in court.
But in every other sense, Thursday’s decision was groundbreaking. For the first time in its history, the Supreme Court declared unconstitutional a federal law enacted by Congress and signed by the President on an issue of military policy in a time of armed conflict. The Supreme Court has historically deferred to the President during times of conflict, especially when the President has acted with Congressional assent. For the first time, the court extended constitutional protections to noncitizens held outside US territory during wartime. And for only the third time in its history, the court declared unconstitutional a federal law restricting its own jurisdiction. (The court has typically sought to avoid such confrontations, because in some measure political control of the Supreme Court’s jurisdiction is seen as conferring democratic legitimacy on an unelected institution).
