I've been reading the 134 page SCOTUS opinion Boumediene vs Bush, and archiving previous related decisions. So I thought I’d post this to complement Curt’s post at Flopping Aces, The Nation will live to regret what the Court has done”, Here I’ve filled in some of the blanks that led to today’s close decision, and included some of the arguments from past referenced cases.
First… disclaimer. I am not attorney. But I’ve written a few briefs for per se appearances, and read more than a few briefs in my time. I guess you could say I consider it an S&M hobby… But I’ll stay mostly generic, and use excerpts. Law, as we all know, has varying degrees of interpretations of absolutes… as our Supreme Court exhibits flawlessly. Justice may be “blind”, but it’s also in a constant state of conflict.
This legal battleground has endured incoming since Coalition of Clergy, et al. v. Bush, et al In February 2002, the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California held:
That court dismissed the petitions for writ of habeas corpus on behalf of the absentee detainees for two reasons. One was that the petitioners themselves did not have standing. The other was that the court ruled it did not have jurisdiction as Cuba retained sovereignty over Gitmo. The opinion recaps history in the first pages, stating the sequence of events as below:
First… disclaimer. I am not attorney. But I’ve written a few briefs for per se appearances, and read more than a few briefs in my time. I guess you could say I consider it an S&M hobby… But I’ll stay mostly generic, and use excerpts. Law, as we all know, has varying degrees of interpretations of absolutes… as our Supreme Court exhibits flawlessly. Justice may be “blind”, but it’s also in a constant state of conflict.
This legal battleground has endured incoming since Coalition of Clergy, et al. v. Bush, et al In February 2002, the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California held:
That court dismissed the petitions for writ of habeas corpus on behalf of the absentee detainees for two reasons. One was that the petitioners themselves did not have standing. The other was that the court ruled it did not have jurisdiction as Cuba retained sovereignty over Gitmo. The opinion recaps history in the first pages, stating the sequence of events as below:
Denying membership in the al Qaeda terrorist network that carried out the September 11 attacks and the Taliban regime that supported al Qaeda, each petitioner sought a writ of habeas corpus in the District Court, which ordered the cases dismissed for lack of jurisdiction because Guantanamo is outside sovereign U. S. territory. The D. C. Circuit affirmed, but this Court reversed, holding that 28 U. S. C. §2241 extended statutory habeas jurisdiction to Guantanamo.
The Supreme’s reasoning for reversing has everything to do with Gitmo’s base status and the lease agreement for Gitmo with Cuba, originally struck in 1903.
