KELO REDUX:

Hamdan v. Rumsfeld: Common Sense at War (Ronald Cass, 30 June 2006, RCP)

Liberty may have been the traditional casualty of war, but common sense is its new colleague. The Supreme Court, trying hard on the anniversary of last term's Kelo decision to find a suitable sequel, performed a rare triple loop in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld. It found jurisdiction in the face of a statute directly taking jurisdiction away from the Court. It second-guessed the President on the need for particular security features in trials of suspected al Qaeda terrorists. And it gave hope to One-World-ers by leaning on international common law to interpret U.S. federal law. If that weren't enough, the (left, lefter, and far left) turns were executed in the course of giving a court victory to Osama bin Laden's driver. What a perfect way to end the term!...

...Of course, the justices wrote a careful, precedent-laden, critically analyzed decision, well within the bounds of ordinary judicial craftsmanship - just as they did in Kelo. The proper criticism of their decision is not that it is politically inspired, not that it boldly ignores the law, and not that it is a decision that is utterly without support (though all these critiques may well come from the right). Instead, the proper criticism is that the decision is simply wrong, just as Kelo was, and will have consequences that no sensible American should applaud.

The comparison to Kelo is really insightful. Yet again, for some unknown reason (perhaps they believe their biases are secretly shared by the average American?) SCOTUS has decided to hand down a decidedly unpopular and legally unnecessary decision whose ramifications strike fear into the hearts of the people. Happily, Congress is ready to do what's right and the end result will again be nothing more than the continued erosion of faith in the Left side of the Court.