SCOTUS Rules Gitmo Prisoners Have Habeas Rights

clipped from www.mcclatchydc.com A sharply divided Supreme Court on Thursday ruled Guantanamo Bay detainees have the right to challenge their extended imprisonment in federal court, and struck down as inadequate an alternative review system set up by Congress. Repudiating a key tenet of the Bush administration’s war-on-terror policy, the court’s 5-4 majority concluded the foreigners held in Guantanamo Bay retain the same habeas corpus rights as U.S. residents. The court’s long-awaited ruling in the combined cases known as Boumediene v. Bush and Al-Odah v. United States is the latest in a string of judicial defeats for the Bush administration, which has sought to exclude foreign prisoners from traditional legal protections. The ruling also marks the first time in U.S. history that constitutional habeas corpus rights have been extended to alien fighters captured overseas.

“Some of these petitioners have been in custody for the past six years with no definitive judicial determination as to the legality of their detention,” Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote for the majority. “Their access to the writ is necessary to determine the lawfulness of their status, even if, in the end, they do not obtain the relief they seek.”

Not surprisingly, Scalia saw things differently. "The nation will live to regret what the court has done today,” Scalia wrote.

For the record, Scalia's a dick.