Roberts was one of the judges in the Gitmo Military Tribunals case-Hamdan

[liveoaktx]

http://fullcoverage.yahoo.com/s/ap/guantanamo_military_tribunals

Hamdan's lawyers said President Bush violated the separation of powers in the Constitution when he established military commissions.

The appeals court disagreed, saying Bush relied on Congress's joint resolution authorizing the use of force after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, as well as two congressionally enacted laws.

"We think it no answer to say, as Hamdan does, that this case is different because Congress did not formally declare war," said the decision by Judge A. Raymond Randolph, who was appointed to the appeals court by the first President Bush. He was joined in the ruling by Stephen Williams, a Reagan appointee, and Judge John Roberts, placed on the court by the current President Bush.

One of the leading critics of the Pentagon's military commissions, the Center for Constitutional Rights, called Friday's ruling "misguided" and said it could have an impact beyond the status of Hamdan.

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1. Roberts gets clearer and clearer. Thank you for posting this.

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More broadly it said that the 1949 Geneva Convention governing prisoners of war does not apply to al-Qaida and its members. That supports a key assertion of the Bush administration, which has faced international criticism for holding hundreds of terror suspects at Guantanamo Bay without full POW protections.

"I think pretty much the entire opinion would be welcomed by the administration. I think there's nothing in there that is adverse to the administration's positions," Carl Tobias, a professor of law at the University of Richmond, said in a telephone interview. "It's a very pro-administration decision."

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Two lawyers representing Hamdan, Georgetown University law professor Neal Katyal and Navy Lt. Cmdr. Charles D. Swift, said the appeals court ruling "is contrary to 200 years of constitutional law."

"Today's ruling places absolute trust in the president, unchecked by the Constitution, statutes of Congress and long-standing treaties ratified by the Senate of the United States," the two defense lawyers said in a statement.

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