Court Challenge to New Detainee Law May Come In "Days"

[kstewart33]

By Justin Rood - September 29, 2006, 1:02 PM
With President Bush poised to sign the White House-backed detainee treatment bill into law, groups are promising to challenge it in court "in days."

“I don’t think there’s a snowball’s chance in ‘H’ that this will be found constitutional,” Michael Ratner, president of the Center for Constitutional Rights, told Congressional Quarterly (sub. req.). CCR represents a number of Guantanamo prisoners.

Strangely, some senators who voted for the bill weren't convinced of its constitutionality. Sen. Arlen Specter (R-PA), who voted for the bill even after his amendment to preserve certain rights for detainees was defeated, called the proposal "patently unconstitutional on its face," The Washington Post reported. When CQ asked Sen. John McCain (R-AZ), who negotiated with the White House to win minor concessions on the legislation, if the bill was constitutional, he responded "I think so."

Link: http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/archives/001637.php

[gratuitous]

1. But who will have standing to sue?

If you're not personally affected (yet) by legalized fascism, then you haven't suffered harm and you can't sue for relief. If you have been nabbed by the new law, you don't have any rights because you're an enemy combatant, and again you can't sue for relief.

Sure, it's unconstitutional on its face, but nobody can get standing to sue.

[Swede Atlanta]

4. I think that was the point of the law

They knew it would be unconstitutional but since an enemy combatant lacks standing to challenge his or her incarceration, no one will ever had the ability to bring this for adjudication in a court of law.

[thereismore]

5. If the law leads to rejection of 200 appeals of Gitmo prisoners

that are in courts right now (because it acts retroactively), the Gitmoers will have standing.

In the end, Gitmo prisoners might save America - how symbolic.

[mom cat]

16. CCR is handling a lot of Gitmo cases.

Help them out. Help them help the Constitution.

http://www.ccr-ny.org/v2/home.asp

[gully]

18. Can't a military attorney sue on the grounds its impossible to defend

a client?

[dflprincess]

22. According to the London Guardian

the prisoners already at Gitmo. (I posted this on another thread, sorry for the repeat if you've already seen it)

http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,,1884351,00.html#article_continue

However, lawyers for the 460 detainees at Guantánamo say they intend to launch legal challenges to what they described as a broad assault on fundamental human rights. "The fact that they are denying the right of habeas corpus is so unlawful and unconstitutional that it throws us back to before King John and the Magna Carta," said Michael Ratner, president of the Centre for Constitutional Rights, which represents many of the Guantánamo detainees.

The first cases to go before the courts are expected to be challenges to the senate's denial of the right of habeas corpus to inmates at Guantánamo, some of whom have been held for five years without charge. Despite impassioned pleas from human rights advocates - and even some Republican senators - legislators voted 51 to 48 on Thursday night to bar detainees from challenging their detention in the US courts.

The measure goes even further than legislation enacted last December that would bar future habeas corpus challenges, because it would bar even those cases already before the courts from being heard. "No court, justice or judge shall have jurisdiction to hear or consider an application for a writ of habeas corpus filed by or on behalf of an alien detained by the United States has been determined ... to have been properly detained as an enemy combatant," the legislation says.....

Detainees' lawyers are expected to challenge other controversial provisions of the senate bill, such as the granting of a retroactive amnesty to interrogators at the CIA's network of secret prisons against prosecution for torture and other war crimes.

[havocmom]

2. Who, harmed by it would be free enough to file a challenge?

How does that work? Can one just challenge a law, or does one have to be harmed by it and work one's way up through the court system?

Lawyers? Help a confused, sad old patriot out here.

[AndyA]

3. The sooner the better as far as I'm concerned.

I hope the first one is filed before the ink on *'s signature dries. I hope they come fast and furious, and that the courts smack down this bad legislation for what it truly is.

I'm all for fighting terrorism and protecting the country, but I do not support the slaughter of our troops, the waste of our tax dollars, and the erosion of our rights and liberties to accomplish it.

[knight_of_the_star]

6. Thank you gods

Someone with brains, guts, and a spine. Hopefully the courts do their duty for America and strike this PoS down.

[kestrel91316]

7. I am concerned that any judge who agrees to hear this

case will be declared in material support of terrorism and be disappeared.

[MiniMe]

31. The case would just be assigned to another judge. How many can they

disapear? It would be way to obvious, not that they seem to care about that.

[thecrow]

8. Let's see what Gonzo says....

http://www.forbes.com/business/commerce/feeds/ap/2006/0...

Gonzales Cautions Judges on Interfering


Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, who is defending President Bush's anti-terrorism tactics in multiple court battles, said Friday that federal judges should not substitute their personal views for the president's judgments in wartime.

He said the Constitution makes the president commander in chief and the Supreme Court has long recognized the president's pre-eminent role in foreign affairs. "The Constitution, by contrast, provides the courts with relatively few tools to superintend military and foreign policy decisions, especially during wartime," the attorney general told a conference on the judiciary at Georgetown University Law Center.

"Judges must resist the temptation to supplement those tools based on their own personal views about the wisdom of the policies under review," Gonzales said.

And he said the independence of federal judges, who are appointed for life, "has never meant, and should never mean, that judges or their decisions should be immune" from public criticism.


Oh great :sarcasm:

[rodeodance]

9. sounds like a not so veiled threat from Gonzo to judges! whow.

.....Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, who is defending President Bush's anti-terrorism tactics in multiple court battles, said Friday that federal judges should not substitute their personal views for the president's judgments in wartime.

[EFerrari]

12. Well, what about if the pResident is losing all three wars? nt

[treestar]

13. What a moran. He is calling a judge's legal opinion nothing more

than a judge's "personal views."

[kestrel91316]

28. Well, it's a legal "opinion". You know, it's not fact, it's not law. It's

opinion and not entitled to ANY respect.

[jaysunb]

21. He's defending his own ass !

period.......

[rodeodance]

10. 'the wisdom of the policies'---te he

[JerseygirlCT]

17. Does he carry a napkin with him at all times?

To wipe the hypocrisy dripping from his mouth?

The judges shouldn't let their opinions get in the way of the *president's* opinion. Because, we know he's now the dictator, and the other two branches can just go to hell.

And immune from public criticism? It's their motto in that administration.

[burythehatchet]

20. in a sane world

this might be referred to as judicial interference.

[Up2Late]

11. Good! We need to come up with a good, I YOUR FACE, information...

...campaign against this un-American bill.

[BlueEyedSon]

14. Why would you vote for a law which you know is unconstitutional???

(shakes head)

[ItsTheMediaStupid]

15. Cowardly political gain.

That's why you vote for a law that you know is unconstitutional.

[katinmn]

23. I say we MUST get rid of the old white Repuke guys first!

Specter, that asshole from Alaska, Domenichi, Bond, Roberts, Warner, McCain, Leiberman and in the House Sensenbrenner and Hastert are the worst! They care only about party and power.

Replace them all with young progressive idealistic Black, Hispanic, Asian, Muslim, Native American and White women.
Like her or not, Cynthia McKinney would never have shit on the Bill of Rights like these horrible, selfish men did.

The old boys club can go to hell.

[kath]

24. That seems like a BLATANT violation of their oath of office, and therefore

should be punishable as a high crime or misdemeanor gross ethics violation or *something*. The oath should be taken seriously.

[OKNancy]

19. kick

[BobFred]

25. and we don't even have a "signing statement" yet

The devil may be in those details. I have yet to read any account of what was passed that gives a sense of the whole bill except this from Sterling Newberry;

http://www.tpmcafe.com/blog/coffeehouse/2006/sep/29/the_star_chamber

At the least it is a law authorizing the executive to determine what constitutes torture and immunizing him from judicial oversight. It guts the Constitution in the most fundamental sense.

Repairing this will take a Democratic Congress, Presidency and a Democratic appointed judiciary. At the least.

[Kali]

26. How ironic that the "terrorists who want to distroy our freedoms"

may actually be the people who end up saving them.

[Phredicles]

27. "some senators who voted for the bill weren't convinced of...

...its constitutionality."

And the mystery of why so many people are cynical about politics deepens. :eyes:

[LynneSin]

29. What if they want this to go to courts

I mean, let's face it - the Bush Regime is supporting torture no matter what happened with the bill. The fact that everytime I supported voting democrat despite what some had done there was usually a picture of an Iraq somewhere being tortured with a few US Military hanging around.

We are torturing - that bill didn't change shit.

But what if we could get this to the court? And what if the courts overturned this law and claimed that torture was illegal and a violation of constitution rights. Suddenly we now have Bush officially breaking the law, something which wasn't on record up until that point. I'm guessing this is going to have to go to the Supreme Court and we have to hope that our 4 good Supreme Court Justices (Breyey, Ginsberg, Stevens and Souter) remain healthy and on the bench AND that we can somehow convince Kennedy (the wild card - he's notorious for go either way) to side with us.

Bush isn't going to listen to what Congress tells him he can or can't do. He probably won't listen to the Supreme Court either but ignore them would be not only breaking the law but a clear impeachable offense.

I was thinking so much about this bill and especilly why progessive, liberal democrats like Sherod Brown and Robert Menendez, both who opposed the IWR AND Patriot Act would support this bill. Of course both of them are in very tight senate races which could affect the balance of the party and let's face it - that whole "Democrats are weak on terror" still works after all these years. We know better but the average voter still buys into it.

[texpatriot2004]

30. Thank you Center for Constitutional Rights nm