Court's ruling should be hailed

6/13/08
“The laws and Constitution are designed to survive, and remain in force, in extraordinary times.”
So wrote Justice Anthony Kennedy on Thursday in the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling that foreign terrorism suspects held at Guantanamo Bay have rights under the Constitution to challenge their detention in U.S. civilian courts. By the narrowest of margins — the 5-4 count that seems to define each of the court’s most important decisions — the justices upheld a central tenet of Western law that has stood for 800 years.
The message ought to be getting through, especially now, the third time the court has struck down the Bush administration’s most egregious attempts to subvert the rule of law. But it needs to be said again and again, throughout the rest of the current White House occupant’s term in office: This is a nation of laws, not of anyone’s gut feeling.
About 270 men remain imprisoned at the Cuban base, classified by the government as “enemy combatants” and held on suspicion of terrorism or links to such groups. The Supreme Court ruled that even these people, accused of the most serious crimes, deserve the right to challenge their accusers. It was, without question, the right decision.
No one wins points for standing up for the rights of accused terrorists, but the cause is just. The government, any government, must not have the ability to lock up any person it so chooses and hold him without the right to challenge his detention. It simply cannot happen. But those laws that have served us so well have been swept aside for years now. Maybe this decision will help swing the nation back toward justice.
Connecticut’s Sen. Christopher J. Dodd has been an outspoken proponent of respecting the rule of law in cases like these, and he, and many others, deserve thanks. The subversion of the laws and guidelines that make us a great nation continues, but this ruling gives hope that it is not too late to turn back from the brink.