Word: quirin
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...unanimous 8-0 ruling, the Supreme Court upheld Roosevelt’s right to detain the eight men and try them by military commission in the landmark Ex parte Quirin case. The Court explicitly noted the difference between “lawful” and “unlawful” combatants: “Lawful combatants are subject to capture and detention as prisoners of war by opposing military forces. Unlawful combatants are likewise subject to capture and detention, but in addition they are subject to trial and punishment by military tribunals for acts which render their belligerency unlawful...
...Quirin decision should be required reading for those who think the Bush administration has abandoned constitutional precedent by designating captured terrorist Jose Padilla an “enemy combatant” and holding him without trial. Indeed, the administration has relied heavily on Quirin as the basis of its argument in Rumsfeld v. Padilla, a watershed case now before the Supreme Court...
Last December, New York’s Second Circuit Court of Appeals ruled, in a 2-1 decision, that the Quirin precedent did not give Bush the authority to exercise military jurisdiction over U.S. citizens such as Padilla. It ordered that Padilla be released within 30 days or else formally charged in a civilian court, claiming his detention was illegal under Title 18, Section 4001(a) of the U.S. Code. Known as the “Non-Detention Act,” Section 4001(a) states, “No citizen shall be imprisoned or otherwise detained by the United...
...zone of combat” argument? Well, when facing an enemy whose tactics are directed chiefly at civilians far removed from the conventional battlefield, we might say that the entire American homeland is potentially a “zone of combat.” Moreover, the Quirin Court made short work of this argument in 1942. It said that American citizens who enter U.S. territory during wartime “in civilian dress and with hostile purpose” are “enemy belligerents,” plain and simple. Whether they are physically captured...
...Administration has justified its moves by citing a 1942 Supreme Court decision that allowed Franklin Roosevelt to try eight German saboteurs in front of a military tribunal. In that case, known as Ex parte Quirin, the justices ruled that the Commander in Chief has the right to try unlawful combatants before a tribunal. But they also ruled that the defendants had a right to appeal their status in federal court. And the decision says nothing about detaining combatants indefinitely or denying them counsel. "To use Quirin to justify indefinite detention of Americans is to extend it far beyond the circumstances...