October 3, 2006

The Supreme Court vs. the U.S. Constitution

By Matthew Woessner
FrontPageMagazine.com

By extending Geneva Convention privileges to enemy combatants, the Supreme Court of the United States has dealt a serious blow to the Constitution. However, while most of the court’s critics focus on the impact such a ruling may have on the trial and interrogation of alleged terrorists, the real danger lies in the majority’s implicate assertion that even in matters of war the justices’ private morality trumps the rule of law. In the case of Hamdan v. Rumsfeld, the court not only ignored a legal directive to drop the case, it practically rewrote a section of the Geneva Convention, forcing the government to abide by obligations to which neither the executive, nor the legislative branches had ever given their consent. This irresponsible use of judicial authority is a far greater threat to democracy than the trial of foreign nationals captured on the battlefields of distant lands.

Under the laws of war, as outlined by the Geneva Convention, all soldiers are expected to abide by a code of conduct designed to protect civilians from the ravages of combat. As a reward for conducting warfare honorably, the Geneva Convention entitles lawful combatants to relatively good treatment when captured by the enemy. Should any questions arise as to their conduct, either before or after their capture, lawful combatants are entitled to a prosecution only by a military court marshal, which much like a civilian trial, offers considerable protections to the accused.

Concluding that members of Al-Qaeda had violated nearly every provision of the Geneva Convention, the President ordered that select detainees at Guantanamo Bay were to be tried as enemy combatants, subject to a military commission. With the option of introducing secret evidence, hearsay and testimony extracted under coercion the military could more effectively identify war criminals without compromising the national security of the United States.

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