The Supreme Court announced today that it would decide the validity of the military commissions that President Bush wants to use to bring detainees charged with terrorist offenses to trial.
The case, to be argued in March, places the court back at the center of the national debate over the limits of presidential authority in conducting the war on terror. Last year, the Supreme Court rejected the administration's position that the federal courts have no jurisdiction over people held as enemy combatants at the United States naval base at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.
This time, once again, the justices acted over the vigorous opposition of the administration, which urged the court to stay its hand and defer any review until after a detainee had been tried by a military commission and convicted.
Note: "the vigorous opposition of the administration". It's enabling torture -- why not injustice generally? Hey, I wonder what Cheney thinks about this!
And I wonder how the Roberts Court will rule...
Andrew Sullivan has it right: "The president, in my view, should have lee-way to exercise executive power in wartime as he sees fit, in emergencies when the legislature cannot be expected to act with sufficient speed or secrecy. But broad detention policies in a war that is now defined as permanent should not be in the hands of one man outside of legal, judicial or legislative review."
See also TalkLeft and Firedoglake.
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