"Court Backs Bush on Military Detentions" by Adam Liptak
President Bush has the legal power to order the indefinite military detentions of civilians captured in the United States, the federal appeals court in Richmond, Va., ruled on Tuesday in a fractured 5-to-4 decision.
The decision was a victory for the Bush administration, which had maintained that a 2001 Congressional authorization to use military force after the Sept. 11 attacks granted the president the power to detain people living in the United States. The court effectively reversed a divided three-judge panel of its own members, which ruled last year that the government lacked the power to detain civilians legally in the United States as enemy combatants.
Jonathan L. Hafetz, a lawyer for Mr. Marri with the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University School of Law, called the Fourth Circuit’s decision deeply disturbing:
“This decision means the president can pick up any person in the country — citizen or legal resident — and lock them up for years without the most basic safeguard in the Constitution, the right to a criminal trial.”
Judge Wilkinson, in the conclusion of his long opinion, said terrorism cases presented courts with special challenges.
“We may never know whether we have struck the proper balance between liberty and security, because we do not know every action the executive is taking and we do not know every threat global terror networks have in store.”
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