The Supreme Court decision in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld

Business Homeland Security

Homeland Security

Hamdan v. Rumsfeld

This is a case wherein the Supreme Court of the United States seized that military commissions put together by the Bush government to try prisoners at Guantanamo Bay be short of "the power to proceed because its structures and procedures violate both the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ)and the four Geneva Conventions signed in 1949. The case measured whether the United States Congress possibly will pass legislation putting a stop to the Supreme Court from investigating the case of an accused soldier earlier than his military commission takes place, whether the particular military commissions that had been set up violated federal law which takes account of the Uniform Code of Military Justice and treaty obligations, and whether courts can enforce the articles of the 1949 Geneva Convention (http://law.duke.edu/publiclaw/supremecourtonline/certGrants/2005/hamvrum.html).

The Court issued a 53 pronouncement on June 29, 2006 holding that it had authority, that the government did not have power to set up these scrupulous military commissions with no congressional approval, for the reason that they did not act in accordance with the Uniform Code of Military Justice and the Geneva Convention which the court found to be incorporated into the Uniform Code of Military Justice (http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/29/Washington/29cnd-scotus.html).

Associate Justice John Paul Stevens' opinion embarked on with the issue of jurisdiction, disagreeing with the U.S. government's proposition to dismiss the case under Section 1005 of the Detainee Treatment Act of 2005 (DTA), which gave the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals special control to evaluate the decisions of cases being tried before military commissions. The judgment clearly stated that, since DTA did not bar it from taking into consideration the petition, it was pointless to come to a decision whether laws absolutely barring habeas corpus petitions would unconstitutionally contravene the Suspension Clause. Associate Justice Stevens' opinion subsequently addressed the substantive concerns of the case.

First of all, the defendant and the defendant's attorney may be prohibited to make contact with certain evidence used against the defendant. Secondly, the defendant's attorney may be forbidden to talk about certain facts with the defendant. Next, evidence judged to have any probative importance may be admitted, together with unconfirmed report, unsworn live statement, and declarations gathered through torture. Lastly, appeals are not heard by courts, but no more than in the Executive Branch with exclusion not here relevant.

Associate Justice Antonin Scalia wrote a dissenting opinion that focuses first and foremost on the issue of jurisdiction, and he was joined by Associate Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito. Justice Scalia describes the Court's conclusion to hear the case obviously mistaken. His primary argument relies on the part of the Detainee Treatment Act (DTA) that states no court, justice, or judge shall have jurisdiction to hear or consider an application for a writ of habeas corpus filed by or on behalf of an alien detained by the Department of Defense at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Scalia's estimation is that this phrase suffices to disagree with the Supreme Court authority over the case. In its subsequent key argument, Scalia's view disagrees that petitioners such as Hamdan detained outside the territorial jurisdiction of the United States do not have the right to the writ of habeas corpus. As a final point, Justice Scalia chastises the Court for taking equity influence of the case.

In Associate Justice Clarence Thomas' dissent, he emphasized that the courts had no authority for this case for the grounds described in Scalia's dissent above. Thomas opposes strongly with the plurality's determination that the legitimacy of the charges against Hamdan are uncertain for the reason that he was charged not with an overt act for which he was caught but with a concurrence the start of which long predated the appropriate armed conflict. Justice Thomas similarly disagreed with the plurality's holding that even if the government had charged Hamdan with an offense that was without a doubt cognizable by military commission, the commission would still be short of power to continue since it does not act in accordance with the terms of the UCMJ and the four Geneva Conventions signed in 1949.

In Associate Justice Samuel Alito's dissent, he sided with Thomas and Scalia's clarification of why they consider the courts had no authority for this case. Justice Alito gave an explanation why he believed the military commission in this case was legal. Alito opposed with the holding of the Court which found that military commissions did not meet the definition of a regularly constituted court as required in Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions.

Boumediene v. Bush

The Boumediene v. Bush case was a writ of habeas corpus submission made in a civilian court of the United States. Lakhdar Boumediene was a naturalized citizen of Bosnia and Herzegovina. He was held in military imprisonment by the United States at the Guantanamo Bay detention camps (http://jurist.law.pitt.edu/forumy/2007/02/why-boumediene-was-wrongly-decided.php).The case disputed the validity of Boumediene's custody at the Guantanamo Bay military base as well as the constitutionality of the Military Commissions Act (MCA) of 2006.

Majority of the justices brought into being that the constitutionally assured right of habeas corpus review applies to persons held in Guantanamo and to persons labeled as enemy combatants on that territory. Kennedy's majority opinion begins with an over twenty page review of the history of habeas corpus in England from its roots in the due process clause of the Magna Carta of 1215 to the nineteenth century.

Associate Justice Antonin Scalia's dissent was joined by Chief Justice John G. Roberts and Associate Justices Samuel Alito, and Clarence Thomas. Justice Scalia disputed that the measures approved by Congress in the Detainee Treatment Act make available the fundamental protections that habeas corpus guarantees and as a result there has been no suspension of the writ, and no basis exists for judicial involvement further than what the Act consents to.

Chief Justice Roberts' dissent took a far more displeasured approach than that of Justice Scalia, focusing on whether the method gave the Guantanamo detainees in the Detainee Treatment Act an ample replacement for the Habeas protections the Constitution guaranteed. By disagreeing in the confirmatory, he implied that the concern of whether the detainees had any Suspension Clause rights was unlikely since, if they did, he found that those rights were not violated anyway.