Combatant Status Review Tribunal - Supreme Court Ruling

Supreme Court Ruling

On June 12, 2008 the Supreme Court ruled, in the case Boumediene v. Bush 5-4, that Guantanamo captives were entitled to access the US justice system. Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote in the majority opinion:

"The laws and Constitution are designed to survive, and remain in force, in extraordinary times."

The Court also ruled that the Combatant Status Review Tribunals were "inadequate". Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer, David Souter and John Paul Stevens joined Kennedy in the majority.

Chief Justice John Roberts, in the minority report, called the CSR Tribunals:

"...the most generous set of procedural protections ever afforded aliens detained by this country as enemy combatants."

Samuel Alito, Clarence Thomas and Antonin Scalia joined Roberts in the dissent.

Vincent Warren, the executive director of the Center for Constitutional Rights, the organization that initiated the action that triggered the Supreme Court ruling responded:

"The Supreme Court has finally brought an end to one of our nation's most egregious injustices. It has finally given the men held at Guantánamo the justice that they have long deserved. By granting the writ of habeas corpus, the Supreme Court recognizes a rule of law established hundreds of years ago and essential to American jurisprudence since our nation's founding. This six-year-long nightmare is a lesson in how fragile our constitutional protections truly are in the hands of an overzealous executive."