Source: http://www.chanrobles.com/usa/us_supremecourt/553/06-1195/opinion.php
Timestamp: 2020-02-25 22:17:34
Document Index: 187685162

Matched Legal Cases: ['§948', '§2241', '§2241', '§7', '§2241', '§9', '§8']

In Hamdan v. Rumsfeld, 548 U. S. 557, 576–577 (2006), the Court held this provision did not apply to cases (like petitioners’) pending when the DTA was enacted. Congress responded by passing the MCA, 10 U. S. C. A. §948a et seq. (Supp. 2007), which again amended §2241. The text of the statutory amendment is discussed below. See Part II, infra. (Four Members of the Hamdan majority noted that “[n]othing prevent[ed] the President from returning to Congress to seek the authority he believes necessary.” 548 U. S., at 636 (Breyer, J., concurring). The authority to which the concurring opinion referred was the authority to “create military commissions of the kind at issue” in the case. Ibid. Nothing in that opinion can be construed as an invitation for Congress to suspend the writ.).
Their argument is as follows: Section 2241(e)(1) refers to “a writ of habeas corpus.” The next paragraph, §2241(e)(2), refers to “any other action … relating to any aspect of the detention, transfer, treatment, trial, or conditions of confinement of an alien who … [has] been properly detained as an enemy combatant or is awaiting such determination.” There are two separate paragraphs, the argument continues, so there must be two distinct classes of cases. And the effective date subsection, MCA §7(b), it is said, refers only to the second class of cases, for it largely repeats the language of §2241(e)(2) by referring to “cases … which relate to any aspect of the detention, transfer, treatment, trial, or conditions of detention of an alien detained by the United States.”.
That the Framers considered the writ a vital instrument for the protection of individual liberty is evident from the care taken to specify the limited grounds for its suspension: “The Privilege of the Writ of Habeas Corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in Cases of Rebellion or Invasion the public Safety may require it.” Art. I, §9, cl. 2; see Amar, Of Sovereignty and Federalism, 96 Yale L. J. 1425, 1509, n. 329 (1987) (“[T]he non-suspension clause is the original Constitution’s most explicit reference to remedies”). The word “privilege” was used, perhaps, to avoid mentioning some rights to the exclusion of others. (Indeed, the only mention of the term “right” in the Constitution, as ratified, is in its clause giving Congress the power to protect the rights of authors and inventors. See Art. I, §8, cl. 8.).
Although we make no judgment as to whether the CSRTs, as currently constituted, satisfy due process standards, we agree with petitioners that, even when all the parties involved in this process act with diligence and in good faith, there is considerable risk of error in the tribunal’s findings of fact. This is a risk inherent in any process that, in the words of the former Chief Judge of the Court of Appeals, is “closed and accusatorial.” See Bismullah III, 514 F. 3d, at 1296 (Ginsburg, C.J., concurring in denial of rehearing en banc). And given that the consequence of error may be detention of persons for the duration of hostilities that may last a generation or more, this is a risk too significant to ignore.