Wednesday, June 30, 2004

A Victory for the Bill of Rights

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Ask American citizens if their government can lock them up and throw away the key and, right or wrong, never have to explain why.

The resounding answer will be, "No way."

Yet, that’s exactly what the Bush administration did beginning in 2001 when Yaser Esam Hamdi, an American citizen, was captured in Afghanistan and turned over to the American military.

The administration maintained that Hamdi was an enemy combatant and could be detained indefinitely in a brig in South Carolina without charge, without hearing and without any recourse.

Hamdi’s father asked the courts how the Bush administration could get away with locking up his son and throwing away the key.

The U.S. Supreme Court’s answer: It can’t. Monday’s decision should send the Bush administration back to school for a refresher course on the Bill of Rights.

Somewhere, somehow, even if it’s before a military tribunal, a detainee must be heard.

The right to due process of law is part of the Bill of Rights of 1791, the Fifth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. It’s the law of liberty, the one that keeps Americans free from the unpredictable and dangerous whimsies of tyrants. It’s the reason presidents can’t throw people they dislike into dungeons to rot. It’s the part of the Constitution that gives everyone—innocent or guilty—the right to be heard in court.

It’s a good bet most Americans don’t know that the amendment had its roots in the Magna Carta of 1215, which stated, "No free man shall be captured or imprisoned ... or outlawed or exiled or in any way destroyed except by the lawful judgment of his peers and by the law of the land."

It turns out that, war or no war, what was important in 1215 and 1791, is still critically important today.

In a second decision, the high court went further. It ruled that detainees at Guantanamo Bay Naval Base, mostly foreign nationals captured during hostilities in Afghanistan, also have a right to a hearing.

With the decisions, the high court rebuked the Bush administration and reaffirmed the power of the law to protect individuals, even in a nation at war.

It was a fitting way to usher in the celebration of Independence Day and the freedoms that define us as a nation.

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