The Hamdan SCOTUS Decision

Disclaimer: I'm no constitutional law scholar, a lawyer or someone who is very knowledgable about cases and precedents and all that jazz.

As some of you know, the Supreme Court has recently decided the case of Hamdan v. Rumsfeld and some already are hailing it as a landmark and important decision. I've heard the decision called a defeat for the President and and a repudiation of this presidents attempts to expand his power as the Executive in times of war (a war that even they believe will not end). I wanted to know more so cruising the blogs I came across these very great very knowledgable blogs and authors:

ACSBlog with guest poster Aziz Huq "Associate Councel of the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU School of Law" (great post) and for a Supreme Court-themed blog SCOTUSBlog

From Guest Poster Aziz Huq via ACSBlog we learn about the significance, both short and long-term, of the Hamdan decision: (Note: There is so much legalese and references to court cases that I'll try my best to get the main points)

Two years and one day ago, a plurality of the Court in Hamdi v. Rumsfeld (with Justice O’Connor writing) invoked Jackson’s Youngstown opinion for the proposition that “a state of war is not a blank check for the President when it comes to the rights of the Nation’s citizens.” Until today, the Administration might have argued that this statement only applied to citizens (like Hamdi) who were detained in the United States (as Hamdi was at the time his habeas petition was filed)

....

But a narrow reading of Hamdi is no longer tenable. In Hamdan, both Justice Stevens (in footnote 23) and Justice Kennedy explicitly invoke Jackson in Youngstown once again as the framework governing the handling of non-citizen detainees held outside the United States. As Justice Breyer says (quoting Justice O’Connor’s Hamdi opinion), the Hamdan Court keeps “faith in those democratic means” necessarily implicit in the tripartite structure of the Constitution. The vision of unchecked presidential power at the heart of many counter-terrorism policies today is thus decisively rejected across the board – and not only for citizens.

....

The Court’s decision to rest its holding on the Milligan/Youngstown vision of separate branches, sharing powers represents an important blow to the present Administration’s campaign to accumulate the powers to make laws, enforce laws, and then punish those it deems in violation of those laws. As Jane Mayer nicely explains in this week’s New
Yorker (and as developed at length in the book by Fritz Schwarz and me to be published at the beginning of 2007), this vision is understood by the Vice-President and others to be at the core of this Administration’s legacy: Hamdan rejects that legacy. This surely will be one of the decision’s pivotal long-term legacies.

Given my limited understanding I believe, basically, that this is the Supreme Court rebuking the Presidents argument that in times of war it has way more powers free from checks from the other braches of government. It seems to say that even in times of war, the government is run by the 3 co-equal branches of government. Also a punch against those who's goal is to concentrate more and more power in the executive using the "Unitary Executive Theory"

From the long article a few of the things that stick out about the decision:

The military tribunals that the president established were deemed illegal without Congress say so

" As Marty Lederman notes, the Court’s opinion rests on the fact that Common Article 3 (of the Geneva Convention) applies to individuals detained in the course of global counter-terrorism operations. This means that the Court rejects the President’s February 7, 2002 “determination” that “common Article 3 of Geneva does not apply to either al Qaeda or Taliban detainees.”"

In other words, torture is illegal and the argument that it is not because Al-Qaeda are not protected by the Geneva Conventions is wrong. The Geneva Convention is said to cover the so-called "enemy combatants" if it doesn't already demolish the term. Plus certain violations of Article III are deemed criminal and as war crimes because of the "War Crimes Act" which could spell trouble for the administration.

I'm hopefull that this will convince or force the administration to give up on the use of torture to garner information. Not only is torture a very unreliable way to get real information (tortured people tell you what they think you want to hear) it is immoral and certainly does not line up with American values.

In any case, perhaps fear of criminal charges will deter use of torture There's also this: since the government now has to give these inmates fair trials that gurantee the inmates rights (either through a newly established court or through the military courts-martial) and yes they do have to be tried eventually. The thing is, information and evidence garnered through torture will not be accepted in a fair trial and could result (possibly) in the possible terrorist being let go due to the lack of legitimate evidence because they were tortures. Guilty parties, tortured, may be let go.

Again, this may force the administration to forgo use of torture and inhumane interogation techniques.

We'll see what happens.

PS: I hope I didn't over anayze or more likely misanalyze this decision, especially the end of my post.