Friday, June 13, 2008

Once again, Justice Kennedy thinks he is President of the United States

All you really need to know about SCOTUS's recent decision granting enemy combatants the same habeas corpus rights as U.S. Citizens is this excerpt from Justice Scalia's dissent:

And today it is not just the military that the Court elbows aside. A mere two Terms ago in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld, 548 U. S. 557 (2006), when the Court held (quite amazingly) that the Detainee Treatment Act of 2005 had not stripped habeas jurisdiction over Guantanamo petitioners' claims, four Members of today's five-Justice majority joined an opinion saying the following:

"Nothing prevents the President from returning to Congress to seek the authority [for trial by military commission] he believes necessary.

"Where, as here, no emergency prevents consultation with Congress, judicial insistence upon that consultation does not weaken our Nation's ability to deal with danger. To the contrary, that insistence strengthens the Nation's ability to determine--through democratic means--how best to do so. The Constitution places its faith in those democratic means." Id., at 636 (Breyer, J., concurring).

Turns out they were just kidding.

1 Comments:

Blogger Sweating Through fog said...

As I wrote on my blog, McCain could - if he goes further - win the election on this issue alone. All he has to do is say that if he is elected, he will ignore this Supreme Court decision. He could use the spectre of Osama Bin Laden and his lawyers in Federal courts to beat Obama like a rented mule.

10:26 AM  

Post a Comment

<< Home