THE CIVIL WAR WORKED OUT PRETTY WELL, NO?:

Detainees Face Limited Access to Courts: But Bill Awaiting Bush Signature Would Shield Terror Suspects from U.S. Abuse (Josh White, December 24, 2005, Washington Post)

An amendment sponsored by Sens. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.), Carl M. Levin (D-Mich.) and Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.) eliminates detainees' ability to challenge the condition of their detentions through habeas corpus petitions. Graham, asserting that U.S. courts have become clogged by "frivolous" claims on behalf of nearly 300 detainees in Cuba, favored denying foreign terrorism suspects the same rights in federal court that are afforded to U.S. citizens.

Instead, he proposed allowing the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit to review the Combatant Status Review Tribunal decisions, in which detainees are ruled "enemy combatants" or "no longer enemy combatants."

Those who are considered enemy combatants can be held indefinitely. Detainees convicted by military commissions -- of which there have been none completed in the four years the Guantanamo Bay prison has operated -- are afforded federal court review.

Graham has called it "a balanced approach" that will allow Congress more oversight and have the federal court "looking over the tribunal's shoulder."

Military law experts worry that the legislation actually strips the federal courts of some of the judicial branch's integrity, for the first time since the Civil War suspending of habeas corpus rights and removing the courts from evaluating the executive branch's decisions to hold detainees indefinitely.

The courts would, of course, have laughed if German POWs had sought to be released during WWII.

Posted by Orrin Judd at December 25, 2005 4:32 PM