“…we shall see the reign of witches pass over, their spells dissolve, and the people, recovering their true sight, restore their government to its true principles.” – Thomas Jefferson
Today, the mists began to part. It felt good to be again living in a country with a Constitution and the writ of habeas corpus.
From the Boumediene opinion:
Officials charged with daily operational responsibility
for our security may consider a judicial discourse on the
history of the Habeas Corpus Act of 1679 and like matters
to be far removed from the Nation’s present, urgent con-
cerns. Established legal doctrine, however, must be con-
sulted for its teaching. Remote in time it may be; irrele-
vant to the present it is not. Security depends upon a
sophisticated intelligence apparatus and the ability of our
Armed Forces to act and to interdict. There are further
considerations, however. Security subsists, too, in fidelity
to freedom’s first principles. Chief among these are freedom from arbitrary and unlawful restraint and the personal liberty that is secured by adherence to the separation of powers. It is from these principles that the judicial authority to consider petitions for habeas corpus relief
derives.Our opinion does not undermine the Executive’s powers
as Commander in Chief. On the contrary, the exercise of
those powers is vindicated, not eroded, when confirmed by
the Judicial Branch. Within the Constitution’s separa-
tion-of-powers structure, few exercises of judicial power
are as legitimate or as necessary as the responsibility to
hear challenges to the authority of the Executive to im-
prison a person. Some of these petitioners have been in
custody for six years with no definitive judicial determina-
tion as to the legality of their detention. Their access to
the writ is a necessity to determine the lawfulness of their
status, even if, in the end, they do not obtain the relief
they seek.Because our Nation’s past military conflicts have been of
limited duration, it has been possible to leave the outer
boundaries of war powers undefined. If, as some fear,
terrorism continues to pose dangerous threats to us for
years to come, the Court might not have this luxury. This
result is not inevitable, however. The political branches,
consistent with their independent obligations to interpret
and uphold the Constitution, can engage in a genuine
debate about how best to preserve constitutional values
while protecting the Nation from terrorism. Cf. Hamdan,
548 U. S., at 636 (BREYER, J., concurring) (“[J]udicial
insistence upon that consultation does not weaken our
Nation’s ability to deal with danger. To the contrary, that
insistence strengthens the Nation’s ability to determine—
through democratic means—how best to do so”).It bears repeating that our opinion does not address the
content of the law that governs petitioners’ detention.
That is a matter yet to be determined. We hold that peti-
tioners may invoke the fundamental procedural protec-
tions of habeas corpus. The laws and Constitution are
designed to survive, and remain in force, in extraordinary
times. Liberty and security can be reconciled; and in our
system they are reconciled within the framework of the
law. The Framers decided that habeas corpus, a right of
first importance, must be a part of that framework, a part
of that law.The determination by the Court of Appeals that the
Suspension Clause and its protections are inapplicable to
petitioners was in error. The judgment of the Court of
Appeals is reversed. The cases are remanded to the Court
of Appeals with instructions that it remand the cases to
the District Court for proceedings consistent with this
opinion.It is so ordered.
(emphasis mine)