I don't think the Dems want this as a campaign issue no matter how just the cause is -- anything that makes them look like the ones who are weak on terror ("they won't tap the phones, they won't waterboard, they're more concerned about the terrorists than the victims") helps McCain.  

Yes, lymon, with the neanderthal, in favor of torture, fascist-wannabe Republicans who are going to vote for McCain anyway (although McCain is supposed to be opposed to torture too).  

This could not be more welcome as a vindication for the position of the Democratic party and as a thorough repudiation of Bush and Bush-ism.

The claim of Republicans that permitting habeas corpus petitions to these prisoners will gum up the courts and the process of holding these individuals accountable is complete nonsense.  Just because a petition is filed, doesn't mean that it gets more than cursory treatment unless it states a good and plausible claim for relief.

The real reason for denying habeas corpus is not that these prisoners will somehow escape via judicial intervention but so that the whole gulag system can operate without scrutiny.  The possibility of habeas corpus protects not only or even principally the individual who can make a successful claim but the 99.6% who cannot.

Lymon, I wonder if that was the thinking of the soldiers at Abu Ghraib?

Sounds a lot more like the Salem Witch Trials all over again if you ask me. Back then they drowned the suspect; if the suspect died then they weren't a witch, if the suspect floated up they were a witch and had to be burned at the stake. A whole lot of people ended up being drowned before someone finally put the pieces together. I especially like the part where the convict could be absolved by "confessing" and outing the "other witches", which was good because when the convict was killed they would get to go to heaven.

What makes America honorable, what allows us to meddle in the politics of other countries against their will time and again, is our "unquestionable" commitment to the basic human rights on which this country was founded. The more we pull away from that, the less respect we command from the leaders and citizens of other countries, and the weaker our hand becomes in any foreign policy situation.

The US Constitution applies to the people who make and enforce the laws.  It requires them, again and again, to justify the rules they made and how they want to apply them, in order to prevent the very abuses we keep seeing at Abu Ghraib and Guantánamo.  That is why it doesn't matter what the nationality of the person is who ends up in a US court, it is to hold us to higher standards.  If this sounds like it might let some people out who are not innocent, well 1) George Washington thought that this was better than keeping an innocent person in prison, and 2) I have my shotgun.

The significance of this decision is something else entirely.  To all those supporters of Mrs. Clinton who now wish to vote for McCain out of spite: a vote for McCain will be a vote to overturn this decision, pure and simple.  Now, wrestle with your conscience.

Damn stupid constitution mucking up our rights to do with those filthy A-rabs what needs being done to them, and with pickhoes attached. Democrats would be stupid to stick up for a piece of paper written 200 years ago, after all what did they know about how we Merikans are being oppressed by that foreign lot from overseas yet. Habeas Corpus, hell that don't even sound English like, right, sounds like some kind of VD. Imagine how McCain can rip into Democrats saying that they gots the Habeas Corpus thingy. Enough to lose an election.

5-4 decision, with McCain as President in 4 years it will be 3-6 or worse, 2-7. For me, this is about the one reason why it will be difficult to vote for McCain. With Obama it would most likely remain evenly split, as it is now.

Roid and GS -- that's what "no matter how just the cause" meant.  There's a difference between having a position and making that position a major campaign issue (as Josh suggests in his post).  I'm in favor of gay marriage too but I wouldn't want Obama leading his campaign speeches on it (or civil unions or whatnot).

Does it only play with the "GOP neanderthalls"?  I dunno -- I think it would take one Al Queda-linked suicide bomb one Saturday in October at a suburban shopping mall to turn a lot of parents into neanderthalls.  

Whatever Messrs. Leahy and Conyers do or think, Obama has campaigned specifically on restoring habeas corpus.  It cannot be avoided, so you may as well hit it head on.

This news makes my day. Really, it is quite heartening to see that right-wing biases have not yet drowned out the sense of legal fairness in the realm of the Supreme Court.

To all the posters who have speculated on the possibility of the ruling boosting the Republican presidential chances - highly unlikely. Given the manner in which McCain has spoken on the subject of Guantanamo Bay in the past, I would imagine that he will greet this decision with about as much approbation as Barack himself.

I am thrilled at this result; I am also a bit concerned that we collectively are so thrilled.  Ever since the abolition of the Star Chamber in 1641 by the Habeas Corpus Act, any competent lawyer trained in the Anglo-American legal tradition plunked down on a deserted island could have created a system of justice the preserved the fundamental hallmarks of fairness.  To think that even after three attempts the idiot Bush adminstration couldn't fathom the fundamental rules of justice that go far back in our legal traditions is worse than scary--and even worse to think that four so-called justices would have sacrificed constitutional due process over important, but temporary security concerns. Yikes!  How can such fundamentals of our society appear so ephemeral to anyone sworn to uphold the Constitution?

I wonder how lymon expects to free himself if President Obama ever has lymon arrested and thrown in a dungeon somewhere? Oh, sure, indefinite detention of "bad guys" only applies to non-citizens. But how would lymon prove that he is a citizen who must be set free without the right to file a habeas petition? The trick is that there is no way to set up rules that prevent lymon from being thrown in a dungeon for the rest of his life without also allowing real terrorism subject to file habeas petitions.

Rhubarbs: "I'll give the devil the benefit of law, for my own safety's sake."  

It's amazing how quickly we forget why we have the Rule of Law, and why the Constitution should not be subject to the whims of passing majorities.

You are absolutely right, lymonl.

I liked this part of the last paragraph of the opinion:

"The laws and Constitution are designed to survive, and remain in force, in extraordinary times. Liberty and security can be reconciled; and in our system they are reconciled within the framework of the law. The Framers decided that habeas corpus, a right of first importance, must be a part of that framework, a part of that law."

I'll drink to that!  ...and then drink some more in sadness that a fundamental freedom's integrity came down to the opinion of a single Supreme Court justice.

I just got out of the car and heard The Decider blathering on about a "seriously divided Court".  Hey right, exaclty like the "seriously divided Court" that installed your sorry 24% oligarch ass into the Presidency...

"I think it would take one Al Queda-linked suicide bomb one Saturday in October at a suburban shopping mall to turn a lot of parents into neanderthalls"

I am not so sure; from the impression I have gotten over time, 9/11 did more to expose existing neanderthals than create new ones.

"making that position a major campaign issue "

Since both candidates are of like mind on the issue, I'm thinking it is not going to come up until someone tries to make an issue out of it.

Rhubs -- a friend or family member would present my birth certificate and/or passport,social sec, etc.  If you are a citizen and an island with nobody on the outside the government can do this to you citizen or not.  But again, the point here isn't the righteousness of the decision but the politics -- nobody is saying Obama should *condemn* the decision, just that I don't think this is his strongest selling point.  Not spending $5 billion/month in Iraq when the nation is in recession is his strongest selling point.  

I read Roberts's dissent, and the first few pages of Scalia's and have not yet read any of the majority opinion--it's all not exactly Hemingway. The dissents I read sounded persuasive, but that is an admittedly  more than half baked and most  tentative impression.  But in light of  the discussion on this thread, I have the initial  impression that if McCain is able to wrap himself in some kind of simple straighforward  thrust of the dissents' more accessible reasoning and if Obama defends the right of habeus corpus for alien enemy combatant detainees, that contrast works for McCain politically as concerns among other themes an activist court usurping the political branches and the judicial tilting of the balance between security against terror and these detainees's rights toward the latter. I see that McCain was right out of the box in criticising the decision. Lest I am misunderstood let me be clear I am not arguing against the rightness of the majority's decision and reasoning, which I have not yet read as I say, but am just making a campaigning/political observation.

I cannot understand how constitutional protections attach to Afghans who are captured by US forces in Afghanistan.  And the decision simply does not address the issue.

Would it be your position that every German citizen captured on the field of battle deserved the right to challenge his captivity in US courts?

butchie, I think the answer is no, but that they were covered by the Geneva Convention as PoWs.  They could expect to be released at the end of hostilities, of course, whereas now there is no easy way to identify such a moment.

The bigger (non-legal) issue is the raw damage being done to our reputation and credibility across the world.  As Tom Friedman said a while back, abroad they think Guantanamo is where you get locked up if your visa isn't ok upon arrival.  Gates and Rice tried to do a big push with the president when Gates came in, but Cheney and his cohort blocked any move to close the place down.

Am I wrong: there are no Habeas Corpus rights for prisoners of war? The reason I understand is that there is an adequate substitute in the rights accorded them. The state's argument was along the same lines in Boumediene: that the system of procedures in place was a an adequate functional equivalent for habeas rights. According to the dissent the only concrete objection to those procedures was the inability to introduce subsequent evidence aftert the initial hearing on appeal. The dissent's answer to that was at least two fold: 1. the power in the circuit court to remand the case on the basis of newly discovered evidence; and 2. this remand procedure is a staple of the federal system in any event.

I guess enemy alien combatants will be released when the war that pertains to them is over. Is that too indeterminate? Then perhaps the solution is not to be an an enemy combatant. General and specific deterrence. But not to worry they can avail themselves of the Habeas writ. and perhaps they can advance an argument based on cruel and unusual punishment. More seriously I gather the legislation that was  just razed had provison for release if a detainee could make a case he/she was no longer a danger to the U.S.

Still have to read the majority's reasons.