Reply #1: follow up link to current story

[maddezmom]

High Court to Hear 'Enemy Combatant' Cases


To fight terrorism, President Bush has made the broadest assertions of wartime executive power since World War II. Beginning this week, some of those claims will face the Supreme Court's scrutiny for the first time since the president began to announce them in the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.



On Tuesday, the justices will hear appeals by suspected al Qaeda and Taliban members who are seeking a legal forum in which they can fight their months-long imprisonment at the U.S. naval base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. On April 28, lawyers for two U.S. citizen terrorism suspects who have been held and questioned by the military as "enemy combatants" will make a similar plea.

The cases pose a fresh challenge to the war policies of an administration already on the defensive over its handling of Iraq and its pre-Sept. 11 approach to al Qaeda terrorism. While the president is urging the Supreme Court to interpret its constitutional role narrowly -- to do nothing more than ratify what it says are exclusive constitutional prerogatives of the commander in chief -- advocates for the detainees and their supporters are telling the justices that the court is all that stands between the citizenry and the unchecked power of the executive branch.

"The issue is whether the president will be the sole judge of how the balance will be struck in reconciling the rule of law with the requirements of security," said Michael J. Glennon, who teaches national security law at Tufts University's Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy. "There is a presumption . . . in cases such as this that neither the president nor the Congress will be the sole judge, that the Supreme Court will have the last word. The court will insist on a high in finding that presumption rebutted."

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more: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A20707-2004Apr17.html

Just discussed on CSPAN...if you get a chance watch the rerun.