Opinion ID: 1026199
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: the detention of al-marri accords with america's legal tradition.

Text: I wish finally to take a step back. In the aftermath of September 11, judges have experienced their own distinctive tensions. As guardians of the nation's constitutional tradition, courts have struggled to avoid placing a judicial imprimatur on anything inimical to the nation's priceless heritage of liberty and timeless respect for human rights. At the same time, we dread seeing again the faces of the stricken and the fallen, and being left to wonder if some grave constitutional miscalculation of our own played even some small part in sealing a fellow countryman's sad fate. These conflicting concerns  of sacrificing values or jeopardizing lives  are not absent in the debate over the detention in al-Marri's case. Writing in the heyday of Jacksonian democracy, Alexis de Tocqueville sketched the elements of American life that he thought set us apart: our devotion to the equality of man, our individualism, our commitment to enterprise, our practice of religion, our profound patriotism, our commitment to a free press, and our devotion to the rule of law. See Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America (J.P. Mayer ed., George Lawrence trans., Perennial Classics 2000). On this last point, it is said, the last years of struggle have done their greatest damage  with executive unilateralism lessening our commitment to due process, mock[ing] the very notion of constitutionalism and [making] light of any aspiration to live by the rule of law. Neal K. Katyal & Laurence H. Tribe, Waging War, Deciding Guilt: Trying the Military Tribunals, 111 Yale L.J. 1259, 1259-60 (2002). Likewise, it is alleged, a rejection of al-Marri's petition in this case would so alter the constitutional foundations of our Republic, that it would have disastrous consequences for the Constitution  and the country. Ante at 252-53. I do not think these indictments fair, and I believe it essential to explain why al-Marri's detention would leave the beacon of our constitutionalism bright and undimmed. Any sound perspective on al-Marri's detention must start with the magnitude of what brought it on. It bears lasting remembrance that what happened on September 11 was an attack upon the symbols of American freedom and democracy. It was a three-thousand person slaughter whose victims, going about their daily lives in an effort to do something meaningful, were innocent of any wrong against those who attacked them. The AUMF expressed this nation's sorrow and outrage at what happened. To credit its intended scope respects Congress's intention and those who died that day. The notion that the military detention of suspected al Qaeda terrorists such as al-Marri somehow threatens to drag us even incrementally towards the degraded level of our adversaries is simply unfathomable. Al-Marri's detention is one of only two domestic detentions of enemy combatants conducted in the seven years since the 9/11 attacks. This country has no equivalent of jihad, no appetite for suicide bombs in public squares and markets, no thought of destroying places of worship, no intent to cause harm that is greater than necessary to defeat a determined enemy. Military detention, circumscribed carefully by the law of war's cardinal principle of discrimination, is no disproportionate response to those who aim to murder scores of thousands of civilians; there is no moral equivalence, only contrast, and nothing in our constitutional tradition makes the detention of terrorists with strong al Qaeda ties unlawful simply because they prefer mass killings here rather than on some foreign battlefield. See Quirin, 317 U.S. at 38, 63 S.Ct. 2. The immense controversy over al-Marri's detention obscures the historical perspective. I do not mean to whitewash wrongs we have committed in the last seven years  Abu Ghraib stained and sullied all we stand for; the government's roundup and detention of Muslim immigrants in the immediate aftermath of 9/11 transgressed our commitment to due process and individualized consideration; and Guantanamo Bay has proven controversial, to be sure. We have stumbled on an unknown landscape, and sometimes worse. But consider, for example, the Red Scare and roundup of social dissidents after World War I, or the internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II, or the surge of McCarthyism during the Cold War, or the bludgeoning of dissent during the last stages of Vietnam. What makes those moments in our history so very sad was that so much of the country approved of them. A fever took hold, and minorities in our country often bore the brunt of it. But al-Marri's detention  and the capture of al Qaeda members in our midst  presages no anti-Muslim rage, no attacks on Muslims' basic rights of free religious exercise and speech, no intent to deny our fellow citizens of Muslim faith inclusion in the American embrace. As the terrorist threat has persisted, there has been no demand for dragnet measures that would sweep in innocent and culpable alike, and there has been no demagogic figure attempting to demonize our friends of Muslim faith at home because they may happen to share a loose national or religious identity with enemies abroad. Our domestic response to 9/11 has been, to judge by the magnitude of the event and the lessons of history, largely measured. But that alone does not carry the argument. Indeed, the reason for our measured response has not chiefly been executive forbearance, but rather a faithfulness to the path laid down by our Founders, with all three branches of our tripartite form of government playing their constitutionally assigned role in charting our course. See David A. Martin, Judicial Review and the Military Commissions Act: On Striking the Right Balance, 101 Am. J. Int'l L. 344, 347-48 (2007) (noting the productive interbranch colloquy that took place after 9/11). The Constitution is not merely an assignation of rights; it is also an allocation of authority. And it is the structural features of our Constitution that allowed a nation bemused in August to yet recover its residue of fiber in September. Article II embodies the great and immediate assertion of national will. It is the constitutional function of the executive to act energetically in time of national peril; no other branch of government is remotely capable of doing so. But executive power can promote liberty through the provision of security, or it can threaten liberty through the disregard of rights. So the balance must be struck. In this regard, Separation of Powers does not mean Hostility of Powers. It is the obligation of each branch to check the excesses of another, but each branch is equally obliged not to forsake its own limitations in thwarting another's legitimate role. Rejection of al-Marri's petition does not signal some pattern of surrender by a co-equal Congress and judiciary to a rampaging executive branch. The legislative branch has not forfeited its constitutional function. In the last seven years, Congress has passed at least seven resolutions or statutes delineating the appropriate scope of our nation's response to the terrorist threat: the Authorization for Use of Military Force in 2001, Pub.L. No. 107-40, 115 Stat. 224; the USA PATRIOT ACT of 2001, Pub.L. No. 107-56, 115 Stat. 272, which was revised and reauthorized in 2006, Pub.L. No. 109-177, 120 Stat. 192; Pub.L. No. 109-178, 120 Stat. 278; the Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Iraq Resolution of 2002, Pub.L. No. 107-243, 116 Stat. 1498; the Homeland Security Act of 2002, Pub.L. No. 107-296, 116 Stat. 2135; the Detainee Treatment Act of 2005, Pub.L. No. 109-148, §§ 1001-06, 119 Stat. 2680, 2739-44; the Military Commissions Act of 2006, Pub.L. No. 109-366, 120 Stat. 2600; and the Protect America Act of 2007, Pub.L. No. 110-55, 121 Stat. 552, which amended the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978. Those who think these acts ceded too much power to the executive may be right or they may be wrong. But they miss a crucial point: these congressional actions have been fought on the boisterous ocean of political passions, see Letter from Thomas Jefferson to Monsieur DuPont de Nemours, March 2, 1809, quoted in The Life and Selected Writings of Thomas Jefferson 545 (Adrienne Koch & William Peden eds., 1993), and while the results of any fight are never pleasing to everyone, it is precisely the way our system is supposed to work. Nor would the rejection of al-Marri's petition signal an atrophied judicial role. The courts have been more actively involved in our current struggle than in any other war in our history. The amount of litigation surrounding the struggle against terrorism would have been unthinkable in any prior conflict. By my count, well over two dozen cases on the subject have been heard in federal court, including those whose names are now familiar: Hamdi; Rasul; Hamdan; Padilla; Moussaoui; Boumediene. The critics who see these decisions as too supine may be right or they may be wrong. But as al-Marri's appeal shows, they have had their day and more in court, and that too is how our system is supposed to work. Al-Marri's case  like so many others in this struggle  has been for the judiciary one of deep silences. We may never know whether we have struck the proper balance between liberty and security, because we do not know every action the executive is taking and we do not know every threat global terror networks have in store. So our belief in ourselves and our institutions has to persevere in this unprecedented world of imperfect understanding where the definitions of victory and progress and proportionate response are forever open to debate. I feel firmly, however, based on the facts presented, that al-Marri's petition should be dismissed. The executive's decision to detain him  or any similarly situated member of al Qaeda, lawfully in this country or not  is a proportionate response targeted precisely at those terrorists who slaughtered thousands of civilians on our soil and threaten to do the same to tens of thousands more. His detention is consistent with the law of war, and our constitutional requirements of due process as well. It is a product of executive action that has been legislatively sanctioned and it reflects the core understanding of our constitutional system that at the end of the day, when momentous questions of life and death are at stake, this nation places its deepest bets upon democracy, and the people's safety must reside and rest with those who have the people's sanction. I do not mean to minimize the step of detaining militarily someone of lawful status, seized within this country, and I have tried throughout to suggest the limits that the laws of war, the need for congressional sanction, and the requirement of some meaningful form of access to the courts impose upon this executive practice. See Hamdi, 542 U.S. at 524-39, 124 S.Ct. 2633. By reviewing the lawfulness of the detention, we confirm that there is access to the courts and that there are limits on actions impinging liberty that can be taken in the name of national security. By rejecting this petition, we would have the chance to recognize that the democratic branches have taken reasonable and constitutional steps to address unprecedented threats of unforeseeable magnitude against our country. It is possible to protect American values and American lives. Indeed, this was the promise of our Founding, when a government was instituted among Men, deriving [its] just powers from the consent of the governed in order to secure the unalienable Rights of both Liberty and Life. See Declaration of Independence para. 2 (U.S.1776). I disagree with the result reached here, but I do so in the belief that my colleagues have helped in some small way to demonstrate the good and earnest values that animate this country  values that require America prevail.