Guantanamo Bay inmates have constitutional rights and may seek release in federal court, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in a rebuke to the Bush administration and Congress on their handling of accused terrorists.
The justices, voting 5-4, said a 2006 law unconstitutionally stripped Guantanamo prisoners of the right to file so-called habeas corpus petitions. The majority rejected arguments that a system of limited judicial review set up by Congress was adequate to protect inmate rights.
``The costs of delay can no longer be borne by those who are held in custody,'' Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote for the majority. ``The detainees in these cases are entitled to a prompt habeas corpus hearing.''
The ruling bolsters the legal rights of the 270 inmates at Guantanamo's Camp Delta, set up in 2002 to detain accused al- Qaeda fighters captured after the Sept. 11 attacks. More broadly, the decision may mean a more powerful wartime role for the judiciary.
Justices John Paul Stevens, Stephen Breyer, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and David Souter joined Kennedy's opinion. Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Samuel Alito, Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas dissented. Scalia took the unusual step of reading a summary of his dissent from the bench.
"The nation will live to regret what the court has done today,'' Scalia said in his written opinion.
:P~ to Scalia. The Constitution is the Constitution. You don't mess with that.
Interestingly, does this imply that so long as the territory is under American Government control that the Constitution follows? I really wish I were a Constitutional Legal Scholar right about now. That has some pretty interesting implications and runs, if I am not mistaken, contrary to my least favorite Supreme Court Rulings.
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