A federal appeals court has ruled that detainees at Guantanamo Bay may not challenge their detention in US courts. The ruling upholds the White House�s Military Commissions Act while violating human rights laws. The court ruled that civilian courts may no longer question the authority of the military and whether it�s holding foreigners illegally.

The ruling is expected to be appealed to the Supreme Court. After the Supreme Court struck down Bush’s original plan to try detainees before military commissions last year, the Military Commissions Act was then crafted to get around that decision. The president claims it is a necessary tool for fighting terror.

Civil libertarians and leading Democrats decried the law as unconstitutional and a violation of American values. The law allows the government to indefinitely detain foreigners who have been designed as “enemy combatants” and authorizes the CIA to use aggressive but undefined interrogation tactics.

But the most criticized provision of the law was the one stripping U.S. courts of the authority to hear arguments from detainees who said they were being held illegally. Attorneys argued that the detainees aren’t covered by that provision and that the law is unconstitutional. “The arguments are creative but not cogent. To accept them would be to defy the will of Congress,” Judge A. Raymond Randolph wrote.

US citizens and foreigners held as suspects are entitled to contest their detention before a judge. The Justice Department has gotten around this basic right by arguing that anyone labeled an �enemy combatant� by their definition is not protected by the Constitution. The Attorney General has likewise ruled that the US is exempt from Article III of the Geneva Convention which bars �outrages upon personal dignity� and �inhuman treatment� to detainees at Guantanamo, meaning that torture can be used against suspects.

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