DOJ Says Ruling on Indefinite Detention Law Is ‘Unprecedented’

[DeSwiss]

Source: WSJ Law Blog

September 14, 2012, 2:47 PM
By Joe Palazzolo

The Obama administration, stung by a court ruling striking down a law on indefinite detention, had some strong words Friday for the federal district judge who issued it. In a court filing requesting that the judge suspend the ruling pending appeal, Justice Department lawyers wrote:

This Court’s decision is unprecedented, and the government has compelling arguments that it should be reversed. The decision holds facially unconstitutional an Act of Congress that was passed to confirm the authority of the President as Commander in Chief under the Authorization for Use of Military Force in connection with ongoing military operations against al-Qaeda and its affiliates—a setting in which the Judiciary owes the greatest deference to the other branches—and in doing so it disregards the interpretation of the President’s detention authority by two Presidents, the D.C. Circuit, and the Congress itself.

Judge Katherine B. Forrest of the Southern District of New York, an Obama appointee, said in a ruling on Wednesday that the law impinges on First Amendment rights and violates due process. The law, passed as part of the National Defense Authorization Act, permits the U.S. government to detain indefinitely people who are part of or substantially support Al Qaeda, the Taliban or associated forces engaged in hostilities against the U.S.

The U.S. government has argued that new law reasserts powers already provided by Congress in the 2001 Authorization for Use of Military Force against perpetrators of the Sept. 11 attacks and those who helped them. Judge Forrest said the new measure was broader, because it covered people beyond those connected to the 9/11 attacks.


Read more: http://blogs.wsj.com/law/2012/09/14/doj-says-ruling-on-indefinite-detention-law-is-unprecedented/

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****Update**** 4:31 p.m. Judge Forrest denied the Justice Department’s request for an interim stay.

[tk2kewl]

1. well, in all fairness to the court...

so is indefinite detention

[Art_from_Ark]

4. One would expect that a Constitutional scholar

would be well aware of that fact...

[leveymg]

29. I think the "constitutional scholar", and his AJ, are well aware of the fact, and intend to use

indefinite detention powers when and if we get into our next two wars.

[DeSwiss]

8. Your excellent point......

...flies right over Eric's head.


''Whoa, whoa. You mean you expect me to uphold
the Constitution!?!?!''

[naaman fletcher]

2. If only we had a democratic president. nt.

[PatrynXX]

7. unless he's like Mitt

intentionally doing this .....



(like mittens is intentionally destroying the Republican party so nothings left)

[DeSwiss]

9. Yes, small (d). ;-) n/t

[OnyxCollie]

14. Very bad things happen under Democratic presidents,

e.g. the internment of 120,000 citizens and resident aliens of Japanese ancestry.

Here's the official explanation for that action: FDR gave authority to a racist military commander with a hard-on for war, who had been listening to racist rhetoric from community members and had received intelligence that signals had been sent to Japanese subs. He declared the entire West Coast to be a military zone and all Japanese and Japanese Americans ended up in internment camps. Everyone who disapproved and could have done something about it failed to do their jobs.

That's it.

What's left out is the economic interest and the decades of laws that prevented the Japanese from owning property (and later, renting property) and the ways farm corporations exploited the Japanese labor. When the Japanese were in internment camps and their crops needed to be harvested (farm corporations had liens against the Japanese crops), the farm corporations pressured the government to subsidize dummy corporations to harvest the crops (avoiding any exposure to risk) which would then sell back to farm corporations for cheap.

Big profits for doing nothing.

The value of the Japanese farms in 1985 dollars- between 800 million and 1.2 billion.

BTW, one of the community members who passed on racist rhetoric to Lt. Gen. DeWitt was California Attorney General Earl Warren, who would later become Chief Justice of the SCOTUS, and chair of the Warren commission which investigated the Kennedy assassination.

Oh, and the intelligence about the Japanese subs? Turns out it wasn't true, and the DoJ had tried to ensure that their disagreement would be included in DeWitt's report that was to be sent to the SCOTUS for review on the internment cases. However, when the DoJ tried to see the report, they were lied to and told that the report had already been printed (it wouldn't be printed until two weeks later.)

Does any of this sound familiar?

[leveymg]

30. Lyndon Johnson's Vietnam. Very, very bad things happen under otherwise fairly good Presidents.

Wars fought by liberal Democrats are very, very bad for civil liberties. CHAOS, COINTELPRO (antiwar component), GARDENPLOT, etc. all hatched under Johnson, as was the use of mass terrorism and psychological operations in war (Phoenix Program, CORDS) and covert operations (CONDOR).

[a2liberal]

3. K&R

and people here were trying to justify the initial defense saying it was only standard procedure. It's pretty clear how the administration actually feels, despite the feel-good, weasel-worded signing statement.

[DeSwiss]

10. And for that matter.....

...there's no Constitutional authority which permits the use ''signing statements'' to get around portions of a law that a president may not like. That would be tantamount to a line-item veto, which the Constitution doesn't provide for.

[RC]

5. What good is a Constitution if the Powers-That-Be keep making exceptions to it to suit themselves?

Criminals have rights under the law, even enemy criminals, so they call the new breed of criminals, terrorists, by other names, to get around the Constitution and the law on which they are based. How is that allowed in the first place?

[DeSwiss]

12. How is it allowed, indeed.

''Whenever the legislators endeavor to take away, and destroy the property of the people, or to reduce them to slavery under arbitrary power, they put themselves into a state of war with the people, who are thereupon absolved from any farther obedience.''

~John Locke

[RitchieRich]

24. ...my new favorite quote.

[FredStembottom]

6. What's "unprecedented" .......

....is the sheer bald-faced unconstitutionality of the powers the admin. wants the president to have.

Deeply troubling. Disturbing.

[DeSwiss]

13. Troubling, dsturbing and yet not all that surprising.....

''That men do not learn very much from the lessons of history is the most important of all the lessons of history.'' ~Aldous Huxley

[rhett o rick]

11. Looks like the current admin is trying to get this to the SCOTUS as soon as possible.

They will, I guarantee, muck it up.

[DeSwiss]

15. Oddly.....

...that is the one place where the idea of giving the Executive Branch more power (particularly this one) where this ''Star Chamber'' provision of the law might be scotched.

[rhett o rick]

16. John Roberts believes in Executive Privilege (read dictatorship).

He doesnt care who is in office. Once the power is establish and accepted, bingo-bango, kiss Democracy good-bye.

[rug]

17. The DoJ would argue against the Declaration of Independence on security grounds.

[DeSwiss]

19. Well we definitely know Eric is against.....

...''the pursuit of happiness.''

[Proletariatprincess]

18. The article doesn't mention the names of the plantiffs:

There are 6 plantiffs. Among them are Chris Hedges, Noam Chomsky and Danial Ellsworth. I wonder why the WSJ didn't mention that? Here is Chris Hedges article from this morning: http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article32460.htm
This isn't over yet, of course. But we have these plantiffs to thank for fighting the good fight here.

[DeSwiss]

20. I'm pretty sure.....

...that the WSJ presses would blow up if they tried to print the names of Chris Hedges, Noam Chomsky and Daniel Ellsberg at the same time.

- The liberal settings on those old conservative printers don't go that far......

[juajen]

22. That would be "plaintiffs", not "plantiffs".

[Solly Mack]

21. k/r

[idwiyo]

23. K£R

[GeorgeGist]

25. In the first place, courts are part of the government ...

This Court’s decision is unprecedented, and the government has compelling arguments that it should be reversed.

[leveymg]

26. So is an indefinite detention law. Lincoln's suspension of habeus was by Presidential Order, the

internment of Japanese-Americans in WW2 was also by executive decree, not by Law, and was overturned by the US Supreme Court in 1944. This Act is unprecedented and unconstitutional.

[OnyxCollie]

27. What case overturned the internment? nt

[leveymg]

28. Korematsu didn't rule on the indefinite detention part, just the exclusion zone.

You are right, though, it didn't overturn internment. Not the Court's finest hour.

Korematsu v US (1944), "Japanese Internment Cases" - The Court limited its decision to the validity of the exclusion orders, adding, "The provisions of other orders requiring persons of Japanese ancestry to report to assembly centers and providing for the detention of such persons in assembly and relocation centers were separate, and their validity is not in issue in this proceeding."


On This Day: Supreme Court Upholds Constitutionality of Japanese ...
www.findingdulcinea.com › ... › On This Day
Dec 18, 2011 – 18, 1944, the Supreme Court ruled in Korematsu v. United States that the wartime internment of Japanese-Americans was constitutional, ...

[OnyxCollie]

31. The Court used two judicial principles to avoid ruling on the indefinite detention.

First, they chose to rule on what was before them, but instead of ruling on the detention (and providing a remedy for the interned) they ruled on the ability of the executive to successfully wage war. Second, they avoided the political question of waging war by deferring to the executive.

Justice Douglas wanted to provide an opportunity for the Japanese to prove their loyalty, but pressure by Chief Justice Stone resulted in him conforming to the majority.

See my post (#14) for more info.

[leveymg]

32. Important background info. Thnx.

[kestrel91316]

33. Judge Forrest is a hero for standing up to the bullies at DOJ.

Obama is dead wrong on this issue.

[OnyxCollie]

34. Forget the ticker tape parade.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=1370518

[Nihil]

45. Looks like Obama has caught the disease ...

"If this were a dictatorship, it'd be a heck of a lot easier, just so long as I'm the dictator."

Power corrupts and all that ...

[bemildred]

35. What's unprecedented is the Justice Dept. claiming the President has autocratic power. nt

[OnyxCollie]

36. Eh, not really.

"Democratic mass parties are bureaucratically organized under the leadership of party officials, professional party and trade union secretaries, etc.... Of course, one must remember that the term 'democratization' can be misleading. The demos itself, in the sense of an inarticulate mass, never 'governs' larger associations; rather it is governed, and its existence only changes the way in which the executive leaders are selected and the measure of influence which the demos, or better, which social circles from its midst are able to exert upon the content and the direction of administration activities by supplementing what is called 'public opinion.' 'Democratization,' in the sense here intended, does not necessarily mean an increasingly active share of the governed in the authority of the social structure. This may be the result of democratization, but it is not necessarily the case.... The most decisive thing here- and indeed it is rather exclusively so- is the leveling of the governed in opposition to the ruling and bureaucratically articulated groups, which in turn may occupy a quite autocratic position, both in fact and form." -Max Weber

[bemildred]

37. OK, there's nothing unprecedented about any of it then. nt

[OnyxCollie]

38. Well, this "politics" thing has been around for quite a while.

People have even written theories about it and stuff.

[bemildred]

39. No shit. Did you read about that? nt

[OnyxCollie]

40. I'm not the one saying this is unprecedented.

Maybe if you weren't so rude and conceited, you might not be so fucking ignorant.

[bemildred]

41. Right, that's the Justice Dept. nt

[OnyxCollie]

42. I was referring to your claim.

Maybe you can find someone to help you with reading comprehension. Is your Mommy around?

[bemildred]

43. And I was referring to the Justice Dept. claim, like in the subject line of the OP.

It's right up there for you to read.

[OnyxCollie]

44. From the OP: DOJ Says Ruling on Indefinite Detention Law Is ‘Unprecedented’

Here's what you wrote: What's unprecedented is the Justice Dept. claiming the President has autocratic power.

Goddamn, you just keep doubling down on stupid.

“Never argue with stupid people, they will drag you down to their level and then beat you with experience.” -Mark Twain

With that, I'm ending this waste of time.