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Supreme Court Cuts Down BUSH
James Visini - Washington: The US Supreme Court?s just-ended term will be remembered for historic rulings that rebuked President George W. Bush?s legal policies in the war on terrorism.
In the most important rulings on the president?s wartime powers in about 50 years, the justices made clear that terror suspects can use the U.S. court system to contest their indefinite detention as ?enemy combatants.?
It marked the first time the high court had examined Bush?s legal policies adopted after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks in cases that tested the balance between civil liberty and national security. Nearly all of the suspects have been held essentially incommunicado, without being charged.
One ruling allowed nearly 600 foreign prisoners who have been held for about two years at the U.S. military base at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba to go to US courts to seek their release or changes in their conditions of confinement.
The court rejected the Bush administration?s argument that the foreign nationals ? suspected al Qaeda members or Taliban fighters interrogated and held at the base ? were beyond the reach of the American judicial system.
In the other decision, the court ruled that American citizen Yaser Hamdi, who is being held in a U.S. military jail, should get a fair opportunity to rebut the government?s case against him before a neutral party.
?A state of war is not a blank check for the president when it comes to the rights of the nation?s citizens,? Justice Sandra Day O?Connor wrote in the main opinion in Hamdi?s case.
Civil libertarians said the court term will long be remembered for the rulings that emphatically repudiated the Bush administration?s position.
?The Supreme Court has sent a powerful message that the end does not justify the means, and that it will not sit on the sidelines while the rule of law is ignored,? said Steven Shapiro of the American Civil Liberties Union.
Although the Iraq prison scandal was not explicitly mentioned in any of the opinions, ?it is hard to believe that it did not affect the court and reinforce its view that unchecked power invites abuse,? Shapiro said.
The rulings dismayed some administration supporters.
Jay Sekulow of the American Centre for Law and Justice said, ?The decisions will make it much more difficult to determine who is actually running the war on terrorism ? hundreds of federal judges across the nation or the president of the United States.?
The administration sought to emphasise the positive. White House spokeswoman Claire Buchan said, ?We?re pleased that the Supreme Court has upheld the president?s authority to detain enemy combatants.?
Apart from the terrorism rulings, the justices issued a number of other important decisions during the term, including one that rejected, at least for the time being, an attempt to remove the words ?under God? from the Pledge of Allegiance.
And the court upheld the most important parts of a landmark campaign finance law designed to limit the influence of money in politics, a decision that allowed the rules to be in effect for the November presidential and congressional elections.
Washington lawyer Tom Goldstein in his annual statistical review said the justices decided 74 cases after arguments this term, down slightly from the past few years and well below the more than 100 decisions for each term in the early 1990s.
The court remained closely divided, with two moderate conservatives, Justices O?Connor and Anthony Kennedy, often key swing votes. The staunchest conservatives are Chief Justice William Rehnquist and Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas.
The more liberal members are Justices John Paul Stevens, David Souter, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen Breyer.
The nine court members have been together for nearly 10 years, the longest period of stability since 1823, when there had been an 11-year hiatus without any change.
Most legal experts do not expect any retirements until long after the November elections, assuming none of the justices have unexpected health problems. But even after the election, they are unsure when any justices might leave
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