The right of habeas corpus has returned to the detainees of the Guantanamo Bay Detention Center. The high court of the United States, by a vote of 5-4, overthrew a law that George W. Bush forced through Congress in 2006.

The 2006 law allowed for a limited review by a U.S. appeals court in Washington of the military’s designation of the prisoners as “enemy combatants.” It took away their right to a hearing before a U.S. district court judge to challenge their confinement.

This is a great step towards detainees gaining the rights that they deserve. Some have been imprisoned without trials and there is even rumor of abuse within the prisons. These terrorism suspects are people just like anyone else. They deserve to have the same rights as all other people, because they are people, just like you and me. Daila Hashad, Amnesty International’s human rights program director, comments on the court decision:

“The Supreme Court did the right thing. Everyone has the right to challenge why they’re being thrown in prison, to hear the charges against them and to answer to that,”

“It’s a real shame that in the 21st Century, we’ve taken such a step backward in the Bush Administration, to say we have the right to throw someone in jail and throw away the key — but no longer.”

I fully agree with Hashad. President Bush had no right to take away the rights of terrorist suspects. It almost seems like Bush wanted to bring the United States back to the time of the Cold War (McCarthyism anyone?). You can’t deny specific people commonly held rights. That is the sign of a tyrannical mind at work. The whole point of a free society is so that everyone is represented equally under the law. With Bush that seems to have ‘gone out the window.’

The high court decision was dissented by four judges. Of these four judges two were conservatives appointed by Bush ( Justices John Roberts and Justice Samuel Alito) and the other two were conservatives Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas. Justice Scalia’s dissent showed his extreme conservatism on the matter when he stated:

“Today, for the first time in our nation’s history, the court confers a constitutional right to habeas corpus on alien enemies detained abroad by our military forces in the course of an ongoing war,”

First of all, the label of ‘alien enemies,’ denotes they are guilty before having a trial. Since there has been more than one detainee released from Guantanamo Bay, this is a huge oversight. Secondly, even if there is an ‘ongoing war,’ (which I personally would not call a war) doesn’t a prisoner of war retain rights? Doesn’t the U.S. government have to abide by rules when imprisoning people during war? Even members of the Nazi party after World War II were given a trial.  

All people have the right to a fair trial, and everyone is supposed to be equal underneath the law. When the equality is broken and the scales of power are tipped in favor of a person, or an agenda (such as the ‘war on terror’), the whole basis of the law crumbles. In the decision passed down by the high court, the framework to restore the law to it’s rightful position in society, which was on the brink of destruction by the hands of Bush, was reborn.

Source