22Dec03-Courts draw line on civil liberties
EDITORIAL
Courts draw line on civil liberties
Monday, December 22, 2003
AFTER A PAIR of punishing legal rebuffs, the Bush administration should rethink its deeply flawed policy of reflexively stripping suspects of civil liberties in the war on terrorism.
It's taken more than two years since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks for the issue to reach the upper tiers of the court system. Two cases, coming from different directions, essentially ask the same question: Does the president have the power to lock up suspects -- many of whom are not even charged with any specific crime -- and deny them lawyers, an opportunity to look at the evidence and a day in court?
One case involved the 660 foreign prisoners at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba. The Bush team claimed the inmates, captured in Afghanistan, are enemy soldiers held outside U.S. territory and not entitled to basic legal rights.
A San Francisco-based appeals court in a 2-1 decision rejected the arguments. The combatants from a number of countries should have essential legal rights on what amounts to U.S. soil, the majority said. Even during a national emergency, the executive branch doesn't have the right to a wholesale denial of rights.
The second case involved "dirty bomber'' suspect Jose Padilla, seized at a Chicago airport in May 2002. He has been kept incommunicado at a Navy brig in South Carolina ever since.
In that case, a New York appeals court by a 2-1 margin ruled that Padilla's treatment, based on President Bush's assertion of broad anti- terrorist powers, was unjustified. Again, the decision went back to a basic disagreement over whether the White House can enact such power on its own without congressional approval.
Looming ahead is the U.S. Supreme Court, which agreed to hear a separate case on inmate legal rights in Guantanamo Bay. The case has the potential for a broad statement on constitutional rights and presidential powers in a shadowy war on terrorism.
The Bush team may already be backtracking. A lawyer was recently allowed to visit an Australian prisoner at the Cuba base. Two legal architects of the lock-up policies, who have left the Bush administration, have called for a review of the hard-line procedures. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld is weighing whether to send some of the battlefield prisoners back to their home countries.
The guilt or innocence of any terrorist suspects isn't the point. Their right to due process is the issue. And so is the extent of the White House's single-minded use of arrest powers without congressional approval.
The United States is engaged in what is likely to be a long battle against terrorism. This war can be fought and won without shredding the U.S. Constitution. To respect the rights of suspects is not a sign of weakness; it is an affirmation of the way of life and rule of law we are defending.
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