President Bush's signing of the Military Commissions Act of 2006 was the most recent and arguably the most effective assault on a criminal detainees' Constitutional rights to illegal imprisonment. The Act states, "No court, justice, or judge shall have jurisdiction to hear or consider an application for a writ of habeas corpus filed by or on behalf of an alien detained by the United States who has been determined by the United States to have been properly detained as an enemy combatant or is awaiting such determination."
Habeas corpus ensures that anyone who is detained or imprisoned the right to have that detention or imprisonment challenged in a court of law. If there is no habeas corpus, any person can be unlawfully detained for an indeterminate amount of time with no judicial redress or determination if the detention is warranted or lawful. It's a bedrock principle of our rights guaranteed by the constitution. It's also a societal value that upholds the principles of fairness, liberty and justice.
With one fell swoop, President Bush has managed to completely undermine a bedrock principle of our Constitutional rights. The Military Commissions Act takes the power of determination as to whether a prisoner shall be detained from the courts and places it into the hands of the "United States" (whatever that means).
Habeas corpus is central to our system of jurisprudence and finds its roots in the Magna Carta of 1215. It was expressly provided for when the Constitution of the United States was ratified. It states, "The privilege of habeas corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in cases of rebellion or invasion the public safety may require it." In Federalist Paper 84, Alexander Hamilton writes, "the practice of arbitrary imprisonments has been in all ages one of the favorite and most formidable instruments of tyranny."
Without the privilge of the habeas corpus writ, prisoners and those detained illegally remain imprisoned without the constitutional rights afforded all people in our society.
This is not a mere legal technicality. It is an attack on the fundamental rights of those accused, detained, and imprisoned by our criminal justice system.
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