SCOTUS Grants Guantanamo Prisoners Habeas Corpus

[flaja]

Originally Posted by deadbeater

Now this is something the Supreme Court has done right, alluding to a title on a thread on this board! If they ruled otherwise, Americans abroad, and every diplomat, is fair game for any despot, anybody who has a grudge. And the US couldn't do squat.

Diplomats have diplomatic immunity because of treaty agreements. The most any foreign government can do to diplomats is expel them from the foreign government’s country.

Since Congress has not declared war on any country, I don’t know of any treaty that would be applicable to the inmates at Gitmo. But since Congress has the constitutional power to define and punish offenses against the law of nations and to make laws governing capture on both land and sea, anyone whom we have captured in Iraq or Afghanistan would be under the jurisdiction of U.S. courts (if we were legally at war, then the Geneva Convention would kick in but I don’t know if POWs would have automatic access to U.S. civil courts- we have tried enemy espionage agents in civil courts during times of war).

Furthermore, there is something inherently dangerous about any government that takes it upon itself to lock-up someone indefinitely without charge or trial. The rightwing media pundits that are hinting that the President/military should ignore the court and continue to keep people jailed at Gitmo are little different than the SS and Gestapo that routinely took criminal defendants into “protective custody” after they had been acquitted by German courts.