Supreme Court Question Effect of Detainee Treatment Act

Summary

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A majority of the Supreme Court yesterday seemed to favor keeping jurisdiction over whether the Bush administration can try suspected terrorists using special military tribunals, and several of the justices seemed to have serious questions about the tribunals themselves. The justices heard oral arguments in the case of Salim Ahmed Hamdan, a Yemeni identified by the U.S. government as Osama bin Laden's driver. Hamdan was captured in Afghanistan in the wake of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks and sent to the U.S. detention camp at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, where he remains pending trial on a terror conspiracy charge.Hamdan is challenging the U.S. government's right to try him using a military tribunal or commission, which would afford him fewer protections than a civilian court or a military court-martial. Hamdan claims trying him by commission would violate the laws of war as stated in the Geneva Conventions and constitute an unconstitutional power grab by the president.The case is Hamdan v. Rumsfeld et al., No. 05-184.

Threshold question

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Extract

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Supreme Court Question Effect of Detainee Treatment Act

Before the justices can tackle the weighty constitutional issues Hamdan presents, though, they must decide if a law passed by Congress late last year stripped them of jurisdiction in the case. The Detainee Treatment Act of 2005 removed jurisdiction over suspect...

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