Friday, December 19, 2003
Courts say Bush not omnipotent
A divided federal appeals court in New York ruled yesterday that President Bush lacked the authority to detain indefinitely a United States citizen arrested on American soil on suspicion of terrorism simply by declaring him "an enemy combatant."
Within hours, a second federal appeals court, based in San Francisco, also in a divided ruling, declared that the administration's policy of imprisoning some 660 noncitizens captured in the Afghan war on a naval base in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, without access to United States legal protections was unconstitutional as well as a violation of international law.
The twin blows to the underpinnings of the administration's elaborate legal strategy erected after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks make it all the more likely that the Supreme Court will have the final say on matters that the administration had argued did not belong in the courts in the first place.
The Supreme Court agreed just last month to hear the case of the detainees at Guantánamo and is widely expected to rule as well on the issues raised in the case of Jose Padilla, the American declared an enemy combatant.
More.
posted by chris at 10:28 AM
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