With Thursday’s Supreme Court ruling putting an end to George W. Bush’s detention practices at everyone’s favourite Family Fun Park, workers at Guantanamo Bay are fittingly anxious about their employment futures.
The Supreme Court ruled in Boumediene v. Bush that prisoners at the United States military base will finally have an opportunity to confront the accusations laid against them. Some prisoners have been enjoying sunny Cuba for six years, while others, such as Wiggles the Clown, have just arrived.
The Supreme Court ruling rejects the very foundation on which Gitmo is based: that the President of the United States can create a sort of unlegislated co-op simply by incarcerating people off American soil. The ruling also reversed the effort by the previous Congress to abolish habeas corpus, which means prisoners will finally be able to discover what the Latin phrase means.
This quest for due process began in 2002 with the first few petitions filed by detainees in federal court. 2004 saw a Supreme Court ruling (Rasul v. Bush) that stated that detainees had a right to habeas corpus under a statute dating back to the nation’s founding. The Bush administration blocked the cases from going forward, however, stating that the whole idea behind Guantanamo Bay was “out of sight, out of mind.”
The 275 prisoners at Guantanamo Bay will now be making use of the immaculate medical and dental facilities to prepare for their trials and their opportunities to challenge their imprisonment. According to insiders, Juan’s Fancy Cuts is booked solid for weeks.
While this certainly means change in store for the detainees at the military prison facility, it also means that change is in the wind for workers. Many have been with GTMO since its inauguration in 2002 and there will be some tears shed as the workload is reduced over the next few years.
Article comments
1 - KYJurisDoctor
While I AGREE with the U. S. Supreme Court's "GITMO" majority opinion that "all enemy combatants detained during a war, at least insofar as they are confined in an area away from the battlefield, [but] over which the United States exercises 'absolute and indefinite' control, may seek a writ of habeas corpus in federal court," I also AGREE with Chief Justice Roberts (and his fellow dissenters) that the Writ can be suspended in time of war, such as the war on terror that we find ourselves involved in right now, and that suspension power belongs to Congress, such as Congress has exercised in this case, "as the Constitution surely allows Congress to [wield]."
2 - Jordan Richardson
I think defining the "war on terror" as a war in the sense meant as Roberts cited is an error in interpretation.
One might suggest that United States has been perpetually at war since the conclusion of World War II, but that does not meet any global standards or definitions and shouldn't be taken as fact.
Even President Bush refers to the war on terror as an "ideological struggle," so one really has to be careful when using such terminology to justify egregious human rights abuses and violations of international law.
I'm more inclined to side with Ken McDonald on this one, in that the inference here is that the "terrorists" the United States is combating should be considered criminals and not combatants. It is only Bush Co.'s adoption of a different set of labels that quantifies this as a "war" in their terms, but the majority of the international community has long rejected that assertion.
3 - Joanne Huspek
Everyone wants something for nothing.