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Home » News » Archives » ACLU of Illinois Responds to Supreme Court Decision Granting Detainees Access to Court
ACLU of Illinois Responds to Supreme Court Decision Granting Detainees Access to Court ACLU of Illinois Executive Director Colleen Connell responded today to two key Supreme Court decisions upholding the right of individuals detained in the "war on terror" to have access to legal counsel and to the civilian courts. Statement of Colleen Connell, Executive Director Re: U.S. Supreme Court Decisions in Hamdi v. Rumsfeld and Rasul v. Bush June 28, 2004 The Supreme Court of the United States today ruled that the Constitution and its protection of civil liberties must be honored even in "difficult times." In separate decisions, Hamdi v. Rumsfeld and Rasul v. Bush, the Court upheld the authority of federal courts to review detentions in the continental United States and the Guantanamo Bay naval base, and to enforce the guarantees of the Constitution. The Court, by different majorities, held that the President simply does not have the authority to lock up individuals indefinitely and throw away the key. In the Hamdi case, Yaser Hamdi, a U.S. born citizen of Saudi descent, was handed over to invading U.S. troops by the Northern Alliance in Afghanistan. The Court held that although Mr. Hamdi's detention was authorized in the narrow (battlefield) circumstances at issue here, due process demands that a citizen held in the United States as an enemy combatant be given access to a lawyer and a meaningful opportunity to contest the factual basis for that detention before a neutral arbiter. Four justices went further and challenged the legitimacy of Hamdi's detention. In the Rasul case, the Court held that U.S. courts have the authority to consider challenges to the legality of detention of foreign nationals captured abroad in connection with hostilities and incarcerated by the Bush Administration at the U.S. military base at Guantanamo Cuba. In so ruling, the Court rejected two arguments made by the Bush Administration. First, the Court rejected the Administration's argument that foreign nationals detained by the U.S. could not ask American courts to consider a writ of habeas corpus -- a centuries old legal right that requires the government to prove to a court that the incarceration was lawful. Second, the Court rejects the argument that the military base at Guantanamo was not within the jurisdiction of the U.S. Government and U.S. Courts. These decisions strongly affirm basic principles that are obvious to most Americans but ignored by the Bush Administration: namely, that our Constitution requires a system of checks and balances between and among the branches of government. These rulings are an emphatic repudiation of the Bush Administration's argument that its actions in the war on terror are beyond the rule of law and unreviewable by American courts. |
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