Guantanamo Case May Mean Greater Wartime Role for U.S. Courts

Having rebuked the Bush
administration twice over its handling of suspected terrorists
at Guantanamo Bay, the U.S. Supreme Court now have United States Congress in
its sights.

In a lawsuit that volition be argued Dec. 5, the justnesses will
consider whether lawmakers, at President Saint George W. Bush's
urging, constitutionally barred inmates from ambitious their
detention in federal tribunal through so-called habeas corpus
petitions.

A determination allowing habeas requests by Guantanamo inmates
would be an averment of a powerful wartime function for the
judiciary -- one that perhaps even United States Congress and the president
together can't take away. Some 300 inmates are at Guantanamo's
Camp Delta, put up in 2002 to detain accused al-Qaeda fighters
captured after the Sept. Eleven attacks.

''This lawsuit is really about the ability of the tribunals to
check the political branches,'' said Shayana Kadidal, a lawyer
at the New York-based Center for Constitutional Rights, which
represents more than than 250 prisoners.

The Shrub disposal postulates that the Fundamental Law and
its warrant of habeas rights don't cover enemy captives held
outside the country, in this lawsuit on Cuban district that the
U.S. inhabits under a 1903 lease. Habeas principal is a legal
device that days of the month back to 14th-century England and allows inmates
claim they are being wrongfully held.

Even some protagonists of the disposal place state the
court is improbable to encompass it, largely because likely swing
vote Justice Antony Jack Kennedy have hinted he will back the
inmates. Jack Kennedy was in the bulk in 2006 when the tribunal said
Bush needed congressional mandate to seek Guantanamo
prisoners on criminal complaints in military tribunals.

Jack Kennedy and Stevens

The up-to-the-minute inmate entreaties were initially rejected by the
Supreme Court in April. Three justnesses dissented and two others,
Kennedy and Toilet Alice Paul Stevens, said they would defer
consideration ''despite the obvious importance of the issues.''

In June, after a military military officer criticized Guantanamo
hearings he helped oversee, the tribunal reversed itself and
granted the inmates a hearing. That measure required the acquiescence of
at least five of the nine justices.

''The manner it was granted here is a bad omen,'' said Richard
Samp, a American Capital lawyer who filed a little encouraging the
administration.

In 2004, Jack Kennedy joined a 6-3 determination that said a federal
statute allow Guantanamo inmates register habeas petitions. He wrote
that Guantanamo ''is inch every practical regard a United States
territory.'' United States Congress responded with two laws that explicitly
barred tribunals from considering Guantanamo petitions.

Constitutional Rights

The inquiry now is whether the inmates have got constitutional
habeas rights that United States Congress can't take away without providing an
adequate substitute. Solicitor General Alice Paul Clement, who will
argue for the government, postulates the tribunal have never extended
habeas rights to foreign combatants captured and held abroad.

''This court's cases in point corroborate that such as foreigners have got no
constitutional right to petition our tribunals for a judicial writ of habeas
corpus,'' Clement argued.

Clement points to a 1950 opinion that barred habeas
petitions by German soldiers who were captured by U.S. military units in
China, convicted of warfare law-breakings and incarcerated in occupied
Germany.

Former Solicitor General Seth Waxman, who will reason on
behalf of the Guantanamo prisoners, postulates those work force are in a
different situation.

Quoting from Kennedy's 2004 opinion, Waxman said the
Guantanamo inmates confront ''indefinite hold without trial.''

Prisoner Appeals

The inmates before the high tribunal include six Algerian
natives seized in Bosnia And Herzegovina in 2002. A 2nd entreaty was filed by
39 prisoners, most taken into detention in Islamic State Of Afghanistan or the
bordering countries of Pakistan.

Inmates look before a Combatant Status Reappraisal Tribunal,
or CSRT, a military panel that make up one's minds whether the work force are
''enemy combatants'' World Health Organization should stay in detention. A 2005 law
gives inmates only a limited right to appeal that decision to
a federal tribunal in Washington.

Lawyers for the captives state those processes are a poor
substitute for habeas rights. During CSRT hearings, shackled
inmates look before a panel of three officers.

The inmates can't have got a lawyer present, are barred from
seeing much of the grounds against them and in most
circumstances can't name witnessers in their defense. In a number
of cases, a 2nd CSRT was convened after the first panel
concluded an inmate wasn't an enemy combatant.

''CSRTs be just to corroborate the desired result,'' said
Jonathan Hafetz, who stands for political detainee Jaralla Saleh Mohammed
Kahla al-Marri. ''It's A totally loaded, rigged process.''

Prisoners Released

Officials at Guantanamo state the CSRTs have got led to the
release of 38 prisoners. Another 14 have got got been put free as a
result of yearly reappraisals of each prisoner's status, and 200
inmates have been transferred to other countries.

CSRTs are a ''robust, thorough, methodical process,'' said
Navy Captain Teddy Boy Fessel, who runs the Guantanamo business office that
administers the tribunals.

Samp said that requiring more than would put an unacceptable
burden on soldiers.

''You'll have got to halt fighting while you begin to document
all of the circumstances,'' said Samp, main advocate for the
Washington Legal Foundation. Soldiers will have got to ''get down
the name calling of all the witnessers and read the cat his Miranda
rights and all kinds of things.''

The lawsuits are Boumediene v. Bush, 06-1195, and Al-Odah v.
United States, 06-1196.

To reach the newsmen on this story:
Greg Stohr in American Capital at ;
Jeff St.Onge inch Guantanamo Bay at