High Court Rejects Detainee Tribunals

[cal04]

5 to 3 Ruling Curbs President's Claim Of Wartime Power

(snip)
But center stage at yesterday's dramatic session belonged to Stevens, the 86-year-old World War II veteran who served as a Navy officer and a Supreme Court law clerk during the late 1940s, the last time the United States made extensive use of military commissions.

Though Stevens, the most liberal member of the court, has sometimes employed sharp rhetoric against the Bush administration in other cases, he read a summary of his 73-page opinion yesterday in a somber, seemingly deliberately low-key manner. The written version seemed designed to pick apart the Bush case for the commissions rather than denounce it.

Stevens ruled that the court had jurisdiction, rejecting the administration's argument that it had been ousted from the case by the Detainee Treatment Act of 2005. That law, even though it blocked habeas corpus petitions by Guantanamo Bay prisoners and shifted all appeals regarding military tribunals to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, did not clearly state that it was meant to apply retroactively to Hamdan and others, Stevens wrote.

At the heart of Stevens's reasoning was the observation that an existing statute, the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ), already prescribes broad rules for military commissions, saying that their procedures must track those of courts-martial unless that is impractical.

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http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/06/29/AR2006062900928.html
was listening to Hang on Stevens song today, it was so appropriate today