The whole thing is fascinating. I've been reading all morning, and the division in philosophy IS very clearcut. In trying to reduce it, as you said, to terms laymen can understand, I am sure a lot of the technical stuff gets dropped, but certain sentences tend to jump out, as I guess those two quotes did for you. It seems to be coming down to whether the DTA created by Congress satisfactorily replaced the federal courts in granting hearings and determining status.
I liked this sentence by Colin Powell I ran across:
Discussing the restoration of habeas at Guantanamo last year, Colin Powell noted:
The concern was, well, then they’ll have access to lawyers, then they’ll have access to writs of habeas corpus. So what? Let them. Isn’t that what our system’s all about? And by the way, America, unfortunately, has too many people in jail, all of whom had lawyers and access to writs of habeas corpus. And so we can handle bad people in our system.
And in the sense of the larger view- I liked this:
The debate among the justices was ostensibly over the fine points of constitutional history and interpretation. But what it revealed was a court as divided as the rest of the country, on the eve of a historic and perhaps close election, over the very nature of the post-Sept. 11 world.
(Don't anyone ask me for links- I've just been copying things that struck me as I wandered around) |
