Thursday, June 29, 2006
The Hamdan Ruling
The Supreme Court has ruled that the military tribunals the administration was seeking to use to process terror suspects do not comply with the Geneva Conventions or US law. If the administration wants to try suspects it must at least be in a military court with a jury, apparently.
I am a little abashed at this ruling. I remember recommending military tribunals as a solution to the problem of indefinite detainment of prisoners without trial. I didn’t consider it an ideal solution, but I thought it was something the administration would have to go a long with at a minimum.
The Supreme Court ruled 5-3 (Roberts abstaining) that US law and the Geneva Conventions stipulate that detainees are entitled to a full court process.
The right was furious with this ruling. Laura Ingraham raged against “softheaded” justices like Stevens who ruled in the majority. Trent Lott called the ruling “ridiculous and outrageous,” before mentioning that he hadn’t read it.
As the court ruled, and as Glenn Greenwald has pointed out, the president could still go to congress to get it to abridge the law to allow him the use military tribunals.
# posted by BitterHarvest @ 4:36 PM 
