Breakin' the Law

Last week the U.S. Supreme Court did a good thing. They took a stand against the expansion of executive power claimed by the Bush Administration, reaffirming that this is a nation of laws.

On this site I had previously criticized President Bush for attaching a signing statement to this year's defense appropriations bill in a section that stripped the courts of jurisdiction to accept Guantanamo detainees' habeas petitions. In the signing statement, Bush argued that the law (inserted in the bill as Amendment 2524) was to apply retroactively to cases that were already in the system.

To give you some perspective on why this was so outrageous, the issue of due process for Guantanamo detainees was raised in the Bingaman Amendment (No. 2523) to the bill, which asserted that the D.C. Circuit Court would have jurisdiction to hear the habeas cases. The Republicans responded with No. 2524, the "Constitutional Rights Compromise Amendment," which stated that no court would have jurisdiction to accept new habeas petitions. The Republican-dominated Senate easily passed their amendment. But it apparently didn't go far enough for the President in denying detainees due process, and so he took his pen and made a few little edits before signing it. With one stroke of the pen, he showed contempt for both of the other branches of government -- Congress by unilaterally altering the laws they passed, and the Judicial Branch by stripping them of their jurisdiction.

In the Hamdan decsision, the Supreme Court rebuked President Bush over the signing statement, affirming that the D.C. Circuit Court retains jurisdiction over habeas cases that were already in the system when Bush signed the defense appropriations bill into law.

The other major part of the decision ruled that the Guantanamo tribunals authorized by the President are illegal, conforming neither to military justice law nor to the Geneva Conventions. So I guess the Geneva Conventions aren't so "quaint" after all, eh, Alberto? See, the reason the Administration has been pushing this argument that the Geneva Conventions don't apply is to fend off prosecution of the President and other U.S. officials under the War Crimes Act of 1996, which would have very serious consequences. Now that the Supreme Court has found the President in violation of the Geneva Conventions, he may find himself open to prosecution anyway.