High court bars Guantanamo prisoners’ appeal

Same cases may return
The court is likely to be faced with the same cases it rejected Monday once the appeals court begins conducting reviews.

Clement also argued that the appeals court was correct in holding that aliens outside the United States have no rights under the U.S. Constitution.

Justices Stephen Breyer, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and David Souter voted to accept the appeals. “The questions presented are significant ones warranting our review,” Breyer wrote. In addition, Breyer and Souter said they would have heard the case on a fast track, as the detainees requested.

And in a sign that the court has not had its final say on the matter, Justices Anthony Kennedy and John Paul Stevens made clear in a separate opinion that they were rejecting the appeals only on procedural grounds.

It takes four votes among the nine justices to accept a case.

Bipartisan proposals already have been introduced in the Democratic-led Congress to rewrite the 2006 law that swept away the detainees’ access to U.S. courts. It was enacted by the then-GOP majority at the request of the White House.

Administration rejected twice before
The Supreme Court has twice thwarted the administration’s efforts to keep the detainees out of the courts.

The Bush administration has reacted to each of the two previous rebuffs by undertaking remedial measures.

In 2004, the justices ruled that the courts can hear the detainees’ cases, saying that prisoners under U.S. control have access to civilian courts, no matter where they are being held.

“The courts of the United States have traditionally been open to nonresident aliens,” Stevens wrote in Rasul V. Bush.

In 2006, the justices ruled that President Bush’s plan for military war crimes trials, envisioned for a small number of Guantanamo Bay detainees, is illegal under U.S. and international law. The justices also said a law that Congress passed in 2005 to limit federal court lawsuits by Guantanamo detainees did not apply to pending cases.

After the Supreme Court ruling in 2004, the Pentagon set up panels that reviewed whether each of the detainees had been correctly categorized as an enemy combatant, and therefore not entitled to any legal rights.

After the justices’ ruling in 2006, Congress at the urging of the White House enacted the law which blocked prisoners from coming into U.S. courts and established new rules for the military trials.

The cases are Al Odah v. USA, 06-1196, and Boumediene v. Bush, 06-1195.