Jump to content

Boumediene v. Bush: Difference between revisions

Add links
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Browse history interactively
← Previous editNext edit →
Content deleted Content added
VisualWikitext
JeanLatore (talk | contribs)
1,170 edits
not all criticism. when you come up with notable, non-fringe criticism feel free to add it.
first ref might be fringe, the second no way. This article would be blatant WP:NPOV violation without some sort of criticism section.
Line 96: Line 96:
The court found that the petitioners had met their burden of establishing that [[Detainee Treatment Act]] of 2005 failed to provide an adequate substitute for habeas corpus.
The court found that the petitioners had met their burden of establishing that [[Detainee Treatment Act]] of 2005 failed to provide an adequate substitute for habeas corpus.


Kennedy's majority opinion begins with an over-twenty page review of the history of habeas corpus in England from its roots in the due process clause of the [[Magna Carta]] of 1215 to the nineteenth century. Next, the opinion surveys American historical jurisprudence on the writ from [[1789]] until shortly after [[World War II]], concentrating on the application of habeas corpus to aliens and territories outside of the borders of the United States that still fall under United States control, comparing these areas to the [[Channel Isles]], where the writ did apply. While noting that habeas corpus did not apply in [[Scotland]], a country under [[Great Britain|British]] control, the Court distinguished that fact by stating that Scotland kept its unique system of laws even after union with England in [[1707]]. The Court turned to [[Ireland]] for a more amenable historical example, pointing out that while it was nominally a sovereign country in the eighteenth century, English habeas corpus review did apply there since Ireland was under ''de facto'' English control and shared the English legal system.
Kennedy's majority opinion begins with an over-twenty page review of the history of habeas corpus in England from its roots in the due process clause of the [[Magna Carta]] of 1215 to the nineteenth century. Next, the opinion surveys American historical jurisprudence on the writ from [[1789]] until shortly after [[World War II]], concentrating on the application of habeas corpus to aliens and territories outside of the borders of the United States that still fall under United States control, comparing these areas to the [[Channel Isles]], where the writ did apply. While noting that habeas corpus did not apply in [[Scotland]], a country under [[]] control, the Court distinguished that fact by stating that Scotland kept its unique system of laws even after union with England in [[1707]]. The Court turned to [[Ireland]] for a more amenable historical example, pointing out that while it was nominally a sovereign country in the eighteenth century, English habeas corpus review did apply there since Ireland was under ''de facto'' English control and shared the English legal system.


The majority opinion rejected the government's argument comparing the habeas corpus restriction under the MCA to those effected by the [[Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996]], which were ruled constitutional after a ''suspension clause'' challenge. The Court explained the restrictions of ADEPA on habeas review were not a complete suspension on habeas corpus, but simply procedural, such as limiting the number of successive habeas petitions a prisoner can file and mandating a one-year time limit for the filing of federal habeas reivew that begins when the prisoner's judgment and sentence become final. The main distinction between the MCA and ADEPA, the Court went on to explain, was that ADEPA applies in practice to those prisoners serving a sentence after having been tried in open court and whose sentences have been upheld on direct appeal, whereas the MCA suspends the application of the writ to those detainees whose guilt has not yet been legally determined.
The majority opinion rejected the government's argument comparing the habeas corpus restriction under the MCA to those effected by the [[Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996]], which were ruled constitutional after a ''suspension clause'' challenge. The Court explained the restrictions of ADEPA on habeas review were not a complete suspension on habeas corpus, but simply procedural, such as limiting the number of successive habeas petitions a prisoner can file and mandating a one-year time limit for the filing of federal habeas reivew that begins when the prisoner's judgment and sentence become final. The main distinction between the MCA and ADEPA, the Court went on to explain, was that ADEPA applies in practice to those prisoners serving a sentence after having been tried in open court and whose sentences have been upheld on direct appeal, whereas the MCA suspends the application of the writ to those detainees whose guilt has not yet been legally determined.
Line 150: Line 150:
The Supreme Court has received over two dozen [[Brief (law)|briefs]] of [[Amicus curiae|''amicus curiae'']] on the case, including some written strictly on the history and application of Habeas Corpus in England, Scotland, Hanover, Ireland, Canada, British-controlled territories, India, and the United States. Twenty-two amicus briefs have been filed in support of the petitioners, Messrs. Boumediene and Al Odah, and four have been filed in support of the respondents, the [[Bush Administration]].
The Supreme Court has received over two dozen [[Brief (law)|briefs]] of [[Amicus curiae|''amicus curiae'']] on the case, including some written strictly on the history and application of Habeas Corpus in England, Scotland, Hanover, Ireland, Canada, British-controlled territories, India, and the United States. Twenty-two amicus briefs have been filed in support of the petitioners, Messrs. Boumediene and Al Odah, and four have been filed in support of the respondents, the [[Bush Administration]].


==Criticism==
Conservative commentators have criticized the ruling, asserting that it "wantonly overruled the will of the people and Congress to suspend the habeas corpus rights of this dangerous and irredeemable class of criminal defendants".<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=67478|title=Justices Gone Wild|last=Washington|first=Ellis}}</ref>


==Detainees whose cases were amalgamated with ''Boumediene v. Bush''<ref name=GuantanamoHabeasRespondentResponse>{{cite web
==Detainees whose cases were amalgamated with ''Boumediene v. Bush''<ref name=GuantanamoHabeasRespondentResponse>{{cite web

Revision as of 01:12, 28 June 2008

Boumediene v. Bush
Supreme Court of the United States
Argued December 5, 2007
Decided June 12, 2008
Full case nameLakhdar Boumediene, et al., Petitioners
v.
George W. Bush, President of the United States, et al.
Docket no.06-1195
Holding
Foreign terrorism suspects held at the Guantánamo Bay naval base in Cuba have constitutional rights to challenge their detention there in United States courts. 476 F.3d 981, reversed and remanded.
Court membership
Chief Justice
John Roberts
Associate Justices
John P. Stevens · Antonin Scalia
Anthony Kennedy · David Souter
Clarence Thomas · Ruth Bader Ginsburg
Stephen Breyer · Samuel Alito
Case opinions
MajorityKennedy, joined by Stevens, Souter, Ginsburg, Breyer
ConcurrenceSouter, joined by Ginsburg, Breyer
DissentRoberts, joined by Scalia, Thomas, Alito
DissentScalia, joined by Roberts, Thomas, Alito
Laws applied
Art. 1, Sec. 9 of the U.S. Const.

Boumediene v. Bush, 553 U.S. ___ (2008), was a writ of habeas corpus submission made in a civilian court of the United States on behalf of Lakhdar Boumediene, a naturalized citizen of Bosnia and Herzegovina, held in military detention by the United States at the Guantanamo Bay detention camps.[1][2][3] The case was consolidated with habeas petition Al Odah v. United States. The case challenged the legality of Boumediene’s detention at the Guantanamo Bay military base as well as the constitutionality of the Military Commissions Act (MCA) of 2006. Oral arguments on the combined case were heard by the Supreme Court on December 5, 2007. On June 12, 2008, Justice Kennedy wrote the opinion for the 5-4 majority holding that the prisoners had a right to the habeas corpus under the United States Constitution and that the MCA was an unconstitutional suspension of that right.

Justice Kennedy's majority decision

The majority found that the constitutionally guaranteed right of habeas corpus review applies to persons held in Guantanamo and to persons designated as enemy combatants on that territory.[4][5][6][7] If Congress intends to suspend the right, an adequate substitute must offer the prisoner a meaningful opportunity to demonstrate he is held pursuant to an erroneous application or interpretation of relevant law, and the reviewing decision-making must have some ability to correct errors, to assess the sufficiency of the government's evidence, and to consider relevant exculpating evidence.[4][5][6][7] The court found that the petitioners had met their burden of establishing that Detainee Treatment Act of 2005 failed to provide an adequate substitute for habeas corpus.

Kennedy's majority opinion begins with an over-twenty page review of the history of habeas corpus in England from its roots in the due process clause of the Magna Carta of 1215 to the nineteenth century. Next, the opinion surveys American historical jurisprudence on the writ from 1789 until shortly after World War II, concentrating on the application of habeas corpus to aliens and territories outside of the borders of the United States that still fall under United States control, comparing these areas to the Channel Isles, where the writ did apply. While noting that habeas corpus did not apply in Scotland, a country under English control, the Court distinguished that fact by stating that Scotland kept its unique system of laws even after union with England in 1707. The Court turned to Ireland for a more amenable historical example, pointing out that while it was nominally a sovereign country in the eighteenth century, English habeas corpus review did apply there since Ireland was under de facto English control and shared the English legal system.

The majority opinion rejected the government's argument comparing the habeas corpus restriction under the MCA to those effected by the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996, which were ruled constitutional after a suspension clause challenge. The Court explained the restrictions of ADEPA on habeas review were not a complete suspension on habeas corpus, but simply procedural, such as limiting the number of successive habeas petitions a prisoner can file and mandating a one-year time limit for the filing of federal habeas reivew that begins when the prisoner's judgment and sentence become final. The main distinction between the MCA and ADEPA, the Court went on to explain, was that ADEPA applies in practice to those prisoners serving a sentence after having been tried in open court and whose sentences have been upheld on direct appeal, whereas the MCA suspends the application of the writ to those detainees whose guilt has not yet been legally determined.

The Court also concluded that the detainees are not required to exhaust review procedures in the court of appeals before pursuing habeas corpus actions in the district court. In the majority ruling Justice Kennedy called the Combatant Status Review Tribunals "inadequate".[4][5][6][7] He explained, “to hold that the political branches may switch the constitution on or off at will would lead to a regime in which they, not this court, 'say what the law is'.”[8] The decision struck down section 7 of the MCA, but left intact the Detainee Treatment Act. In a concurring opinion, Justice Souter stressed the fact that the prisoners involved have been imprisoned for as many as six years. Chief Justice Roberts and Justice Scalia each wrote opinions for the four dissenters.[9]

Justice Souter's concurrence

Justice Souter's concurrence was joined by Justices Ginsburg and Breyer. According to Justice Souter, "subsequent legislation eliminated the statutory habeas jurisdiction" over the claims brought by Guantanamo Bay detainees, "so that now there must be constitutionally based jurisdiction or none at all." [10] Citing the Supreme Court's decision in Rasul v. Bush, he added that the "“[a]pplication of the habeas statute to persons detained at [Guantanamo] is consistent with the historical reach of the writ of habeas corpus." [11] Justice Souter pointed out to the lengthy imprisonments, some of which have exceeded six years, as "a factor insufficiently appreciated by the dissents." [12] He thus denied the charge of the dissenters that the Court's majority "is precipitating the judiciary into reviewing claims that the military (subject to appeal to the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit) could handle within some reasonable period of time." [13]

Justice Scalia's dissent

Justice Scalia's dissent was joined by Chief Justice Roberts, and Justices Alito and Thomas. Justice Scalia argued that "the procedures prescribed by Congress in the Detainee Treatment Act provide the essential protections that habeas corpus guarantees; there has thus been no suspension of the writ, and no basis exists for judicial intervention beyond what the Act allows." [14] The commission of terrorist acts by former prisoners at Guantanamo Bay after their release "illustrates the incredible difficulty of assessing who is and who is not an enemy combatant in a foreign theater of operations where the environment does not lend itself to rigorous evidence collection." [15] A consequence of the Court's majority decision will be that "how to handle enemy prisoners in this war will ultimately lie with the branch [the judiciary] that knows least about the national security concerns that the subject entails." [16] A conflict between the Military Commissions Act and the Suspension Clause "arises only if the Suspension Clause preserves the privilege of the writ for aliens held by the United States military as enemy combatants at the base in Guantanamo Bay, located within the sovereign territory of Cuba." [17]

Justice Scalia added that the Court's majority "admits that it cannot determine whether the writ historically extended to aliens held abroad, and it concedes (necessarily) that Guantanamo Bay lies outside the sovereign territory of the United States." [18] Justice Scalia pointed out that Johnson v. Eisentrager (where the Supreme Court decided that U.S. courts had no jurisdiction over German war criminals held in a U.S.-administered German prison) "thus held—held beyond any doubt—that the Constitution does not ensure habeas for aliens held by the United States in areas over which our Government is not sovereign."[19] However, it should be noted that in 2004 Justice Stevens authored the decision in Rasul v. Bush, which dealt with the Supreme Court's jurisdiction over writs of habeas corpus filed in Guantanamo Bay. In this decision, Stevens wrote that in historic common law "courts exercised habeas jurisdiction over the claims of aliens detained within sovereign territory of the realm."[20]

According to Justice Scalia, the Court's majority's "analysis produces a crazy result: Whereas those convicted and sentenced to death for war crimes are without judicial remedy, all enemy combatants detained during a war, at least insofar as they are confined in an area away from the battlefield over which the United States exercises “absolute and indefinite” control, may seek a writ of habeas corpus in federal court." Justice Scalia added that the Constitution allows suspension of the writ of habeas corpus only in cases of rebellion or invasion, both domestic disturbances; he asked "[i]f the extraterritorial scope of habeas turned on flexible, “functional” considerations, as the [Court's majority] holds, why would the Constitution limit its suspension almost entirely to instances of domestic crisis?" [21]

Joanne Mariner, a lawyer with Human Rights Watch, noted that, in his dissent, Scalia dated the beginning of the "war on terror" to the 1983 bombing of US Marine barracks in Lebanon, not to any Al Qaeda attacks.[22]

Chief Justice Roberts' dissent

Chief Justice Roberts' dissent took a far more tempered approach than that of Justice Scalia, focusing on whether the process afforded the Guantanamo detainees in the Detainee Treatment Act were an adequate substitute for the Habeas protections the Constitution guaranteed. By arguing in the affirmative, he implied that the issue of whether the detainees had any Suspension Clause rights was moot (since, if they did, he found that those rights were not violated anyway). This line of reasoning was more in line with the plain reading of the Johnson v. Eisentrager (which denied German prisoners of war Habeas rights primarily due to both practical logistical concerns and the determination that they had been afforded an adequate substitute: traditional military War-Crimes trials, which complied with the Geneva Conventions) than that of Justice Scalia, and also avoided the more controversial and complicated issue of whether the detainees were entitled to file Habeas petitions in the first place. However, the claim of the Chief Justice that the Court has struck down generous procedural protections afforded 'enemy combatants' and replaced them with a set of "shapeless" procedures to be defined by federal courts, has been described as disingenuous by some commentators.[23]

Background timeline

for more information, see Timeline of Boumediene v. Bush

Amicus briefs

The Supreme Court has received over two dozen briefs of amicus curiae on the case, including some written strictly on the history and application of Habeas Corpus in England, Scotland, Hanover, Ireland, Canada, British-controlled territories, India, and the United States. Twenty-two amicus briefs have been filed in support of the petitioners, Messrs. Boumediene and Al Odah, and four have been filed in support of the respondents, the Bush Administration.

Criticism

Conservative commentators have criticized the ruling, asserting that it "wantonly overruled the will of the people and Congress to suspend the habeas corpus rights of this dangerous and irredeemable class of criminal defendants".[24]

Detainees whose cases were amalgamated with Boumediene v. Bush[25]

See also

References

  1. ^ Marjorie Cohn (February 27 2007). "Why Boumediene Was Wrongly Decided". The Jurist. Retrieved 2007-04-16. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
  2. ^ "Al Odah v United States". Center for Constitutional Rights. April 27 2005. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
  3. ^ "Lakhdar Boumediene, et al. v. George W. Bush -- docket". Oyez.org. Friday, August 24, 2007. Retrieved 2007-11-06. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
  4. ^ a b c Mark Sherman (June 12 2008). "High Court: Gitmo detainees have rights in court". Associated Press. Retrieved 2008-06-12. The court said not only that the detainees have rights under the Constitution, but that the system the administration has put in place to classify them as enemy combatants and review those decisions is inadequate. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |date= (help) mirror
  5. ^ a b c Mark Sherman (June 12 2008). "Terror suspects can challenge detention: U.S. Supreme Court". Globe and Mail. Retrieved 2008-06-12. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
  6. ^ a b c Mark Sherman (June 12 2008). "High Court sides with Guantanamo detainees again". Montorey Herald. Retrieved 2008-06-12. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
  7. ^ a b c James Oliphant (June 12 2008). "Court backs Gitmo detainees". Baltimore Sun. Retrieved 2008-06-12. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |date= (help) mirror
  8. ^ Stuck with Guantánamo (The Economist)
  9. ^ "Boumediene et al. v. Bush -- No. 06–1195" (PDF). Supreme Court of the United States. June 12 2008. Retrieved 2008-06-15. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
  10. ^ US Supreme Court, Boumediene et al. v. Bush, President of the United States, et al., p. 79. No. 06–1195. [1].
  11. ^ US Supreme Court, Boumediene et al. v. Bush, President of the United States, et al., p. 80. No. 06–1195. [2].
  12. ^ US Supreme Court, Boumediene et al. v. Bush, President of the United States, et al., p. 80. No. 06–1195. [3].
  13. ^ US Supreme Court, Boumediene et al. v. Bush, President of the United States, et al., p. 80. No. 06–1195. [4].
  14. ^ US Supreme Court, Boumediene et al. v. Bush, President of the United States, et al., p. 111. No. 06–1195. [5].
  15. ^ US Supreme Court, Boumediene et al. v. Bush, President of the United States, et al., p. 113. No. 06–1195. [6].
  16. ^ US Supreme Court, Boumediene et al. v. Bush, President of the United States, et al., p. 115. No. 06–1195. [7].
  17. ^ US Supreme Court, Boumediene et al. v. Bush, President of the United States, et al., p. 115-6. No. 06–1195. [8].
  18. ^ US Supreme Court, Boumediene et al. v. Bush, President of the United States, et al., p. 116. No. 06–1195. [9].
  19. ^ US Supreme Court, Boumediene et al. v. Bush, President of the United States, et al., p. 119. No. 06–1195. [10].
  20. ^ US Supreme Court, Rasul et al. v. Bush, President of the United States, et al., p. 13, No. 03-334. [11].
  21. ^ US Supreme Court, Boumediene et al. v. Bush, President of the United States, et al., p. 132. No. 06–1195. [12].
  22. ^ Joanne Mariner (June 17 2007). "What Boumediene Means". Findlaw. Retrieved 2008-06-17. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |date= (help) mirror
  23. ^ http://www.fljs.org/Boumediene The Boumediene Decision: What Now?
  24. ^ Washington, Ellis. "Justices Gone Wild".
  25. ^ "RESPONDENTS' RESPONSE TO COURT'S AUGUST 7, 2006 ORDER" (PDF). United States Department of Defense. August 15 2006. Retrieved 2008-06-23. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)

External links

Wikisource has original text related to this article:
Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Boumediene_v._Bush&oldid=222197535"