Will the Supreme Court shackle new tribunal law? | csmonitor.com
Will the Supreme Court shackle new tribunal law? | csmonitor.com: "The new law rejects much of the liberal wing's approach in the Rasul and Hamdan decisions.
• It rejects the high court's view (in the Rasul decision) that suspected Al Qaeda members detained at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, must be afforded the right to file habeas corpus challenges in US courts.
• It rejects Stevens's majority opinion (in the Hamdan decision) that the Detainee Treatment Act of 2005 did not retroactively strip the Supreme Court (and other federal courts) of jurisdiction to hear habeas corpus challenges filed by Guantánamo detainees.
• It rejects the conclusion of four justices in the liberal wing (in Hamdan) that Al Qaeda defendants on trial before military commissions must be allowed to attend their entire trial and confront all evidence being used against them - even when the evidence is classified.
• It rejects the conclusion of the Stevens plurality in the Hamdan decision that conspiracy is not a war crime and thus cannot be the basis of a trial before a military commission operating under the Law of War.
• And it rejects the liberal wing's more expansive view (in Hamdan) of the applicability of Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions to Al Qaeda suspects. That provision gives a base line of human rights protections for detainees.
Although Congress and the Bush administration acknowledge that Common Article 3 applies in the war on terror, the Military Commissions Act interprets the treaty in a way that narrows its protections and retroactively provides a defense for US officials who engaged in harsh interrogation tactics such as simulated drowning and induced hypothermia.
Human rights workers say such harsh tactics violate the treaty. Administration officials deny that US personnel have engaged in torture or unlawfully cruel conduct during interrogations."
