What do you do if the Supreme Court rules that you’re in breach of Constitutional law? Amend the Constitution, of course! Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina is furious, calling the Supreme Court’s ruling that the prisoners at Guantanamo have a right to challenge their detention in federal courts “dangerous and irresponsible.” He went on: “Our nation is at war. It’s truly unfortunate the Supreme Court did not recognize and appreciate that fact.”
Now, you can understand part of the reason that Graham is so upset. Graham, a lawyer in the armed forces, helped to design the Military Commissions Act of 2006 and helped to get it passed, and he boasted that it would pass any challenge before the Court. Well, it didn’t. The Court narrowly ruled 5-4 that a provision of the Act dealing with Habeas Corpus fell short of fulfilling constitutional requirements. So, Graham got a smackdown. What also probably upsets Graham is that the US is not being allowed to hold “enemy combatants” at will. The whole idea of military commisions, as they were designed, is a total sham and was essentially meant to ensure that people that the administration wanted prosecuted and held would never be able to leave. So, what happens now? I’m not a constitutional lawyer, but I have a friend who has argued before the Supreme Court, and his take is that you’ll probably see a number of the high-value detainees at Gitmo get transferred to another country. His view is that the US can’t afford to lose a number of terror cases and doesn’t want these guys to be able to go to federal courts. He thinks that the administration will either try to pass a new law that the Court would not strike down, although that is less likely with the Democrats in charge now, or the administration will just revert to rendering these detainees to countries where they don’t care about the rule of law.
Update: I should have mentioned that John McCain was also one of the main architects of the Military Commissions Act. He said he was “concerned” about the Court’s ruling, while Obama praised the decision. To the extent that this will be front page news for the next couple of days, it’ll take the heat off of Obama and his VP vetter’s resignation and shift it to McCain and his work on the Military Commissions Act.
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June 13th, 2008 at 3:17 pm
God, I hope they don’t re-rendition people from Gitmo…Excited about the court’s ruling though…
July 7th, 2008 at 3:27 pm
[...] I believe Lindsay Graham should be removed from office based on his idea that the Constitution should be amended to suspend Habeus Corpus because of the Supreme Court’s (correct) ruling that prisoners at Guantanamo have the right [...]
August 31st, 2008 at 1:12 am
[...] I believe Lindsay Graham should be removed from office based on his idea that the Constitution should be amended to suspend Habeus Corpus because of the Supreme Court’s (correct) ruling that prisoners at Guantanamo have the right [...]