Monday, March 27, 2006

Bush's Wartime Powers Face Court Challenge

It seems the US Supreme Court will hear Hamdan vs Rumsfeld. Hamdan was Osama bin Laden's former driver and has been at Guantanamo since 2001. I think the charges are conspiracy to commit something but he's being held as an enemy combatant and would be tried in a military tribunal. The defense is saying Bush doesn't have the power to convene military trials as part of the war on terror.

That all sounds kinda dumb to me. He was captured in Afghanistan and I don't think that people captured in war actually face trails (Scalia doesn't think so). Then again, this article by a 3rd year Yale Law School student who worked on Hamden's defense does explain the questions well. "Can the president try suspected members of al-Qaida by military commission, as opposed to courts-martial or in the criminal courts? Do the Geneva Conventions apply to the war on terror? Did the recently passed Detainee Treatment Act strip the Supreme Court of jurisdiction to decide all of these questions? And does Congress even have that kind of power over the court?"

One last note, this case came up to a US Appeals Court and they said Bush had the power to do this. John Roberts was one of the judges that heard and decided this and he has already recused himself from hearing this at the Supreme Court.

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