![\"\"](\"http:\/\/www.ofcourseimright.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2008\/06\/court.jpg\" "\\"court\\"")
Most of the time when you see that headline the next comment talks about abortion or gun control or the death penalty.\u00a0 But this Supreme Court seems to be after something far more dangerous: its own power.\u00a0 It’s an axiom in Washington that each branch of government vigorously protects its own constitutional turf.\u00a0 Not necessarily so with some of the justices, however.<\/p>\n
While this Court has at times shown great deference to the President, they have recently repeatedly slapped the administration for overreaching.\u00a0 This past week the Court handed down two separate decisions, that said that the administration cannot hold someone indefinitely under its control \u2013 regardless of location \u2013 without a hearing before a judge.\u00a0 In one case, Boudemiene v. Bush<\/a>, the justices affirmed that the Writ of Habeus Corpus (sometimes called the Great Writ) applies to inmates at Guantanamo Bay in spite of the fact that Congress had specifically limited Habeus reviews in the Detainee Treatment Act of 2005.\u00a0 Anthony Kennedy wrote for a bare majority of five justices that, “To hold that the political branches may switch the Constitution on or off at will would lead to a regime in which they, not this Court, say `what law is.'”\u00a0 They arrived at this conclusion having determined that those acting on the color of authority of the United States are subject to the limits of the Constitution.\u00a0 Doesn’t this seem brilliantly obvious?<\/p>\n Our problems reside in what the other<\/strong> four justices were thinking.\u00a0 Justice Roberts hides behind an abused procedure to keep these people prisoners, and then mischaracterizes Combatant Status Review Tribunals (CSRTs) as sufficing for purposes of Habeus review.\u00a0 Sadly former participants of that review have said<\/a> in open court precisely that it is inadequate.\u00a0 We don’t know because they’re secret.<\/p>\n Justice Scalia went further, arguing the end of the world in the first section of his opinion, because, he argues, what the Court has done is to strip the government away from mechanisms necessary to protect the United States.\u00a0 Like torture?\u00a0 Holding someone indefinitely without any judicial review?\u00a0 If Justice Scalia believes such a system would be to his liking, perhaps he would prefer to live in Zimbabwe where such thinking is enacted on a daily basis.\u00a0 Of course he doesn’t have to go anywhere near so far as the third consecutive decision of this Court to require reasonable review has of yet not caused a single prisoner to be released or even reviewed by a judge.<\/p>\n The Court for a long time has attempted to shy away from deciding laws on constitutional grounds.\u00a0 Much better to use more limited methods of finding conflicting law or a narrow interpretation that squeezes through any bars put forth by the Writ.\u00a0 Here, however, the situation was simple: the U.S. controlled the prisoners, and the prisoners were not given by any reasonable characterization a meaningful review.\u00a0 The Court then gets to decide whether or not Habeus is to be enforced.\u00a0 Four justices have chosen to ignore Marbury v. Madison in favor of expediency, or a doctrine of President as king.\u00a0 Neither bodes well for separation of powers.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Most of the time when you see that headline the next comment talks about abortion or gun control or the death penalty.\u00a0 But this Supreme Court seems to be after something far more dangerous: its own power.\u00a0 It’s an axiom in Washington that each branch of government vigorously protects its own constitutional turf.\u00a0 Not necessarily … Continue reading “Beware The Supreme Court”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[21,22],"class_list":["post-16","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","tag-law","tag-supreme-court"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ofcourseimright.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ofcourseimright.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ofcourseimright.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ofcourseimright.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ofcourseimright.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=16"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/ofcourseimright.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ofcourseimright.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=16"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ofcourseimright.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=16"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ofcourseimright.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=16"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}