Introduction
The Boumediene v. Bush case was a writ that required Lakhdar Boumediene to be brought to a court in The United States to secure his release. This was unless the court got to rule that his detention was indeed lawful. Boumediene, a citizen of Bosnia, had gotten detained in the Guantanamo Bay detention camp in Cuba . At the time, Guantanamo Bay was not under the jurisdiction of United States.
The terms of the 1903 agreement to lease between Cuba and The U.S stated that the United States got the right to complete jurisdiction and control over Guantanamo Bay, whereas Cuba was to retain absolute sovereignty over the territory . There was a combination of the above-stated conditions with the habeas (produce the body) petition case of Al Odah v. The United States, which brought the question of whether it was legal for Boumediene to get imprisoned at the Guantanamo Bay Military base held by The United States. It also questioned the legality of the Military Commissions Act that had gotten implemented in 2006. The case got determine by the Supreme Court and arguments determined in the month December of 2007.
Delegate your assignment to our experts and they will do the rest.
Background
The above case was as a result of lawsuits filed in the court as a due to maltreatment of over 200 prisoners at the Guantanamo Bay Base. This became an issue after President George Bush indicated that the detainees had merely no rights of protection under The United States Constitution.
According to the opinion of the majority, it got stated that the 2006 Military Commissions Act of got violated by holding the prisoners captive without the required legal authority. It further noted that according to The United States Constitution, the prisoners had the right to get presented in court during a trial. The court decided to adapt to the use of isolated cases, as the U.S was to maintain overall control of the jurisdiction in Guantanamo Bay (Internationalcrimesdatabase.org, 2019) , while Cuba retained total sovereignty, and came out stating that any detainee had a right to the entitlement to be present during the trial. This got noted in section 9, Article 1 of the United States Constitution. The court finally ruled that the detainees had absolutely no rights, not even the right to habeas corpus and therefore rejected their requests to be present during the trial. The Supreme Court disagreed with the lower court’s decision and stated in its holding that any fundamental rights that were relevant to both cases should be extended to the detainees as well and doing otherwise would applying American laws selectively.
Analysis of the Court Opinions
In the majority decision, read by Justice Anthony Kennedy, the detainees that got held in Guantanamo and those labeled as ‘enemy combatants' were entitled to the right to be present during their trial. He further stated that in the event of dismissal of the right by Congress (Encyclopedia Britannica, 2019) , then a sufficient substitute power that would offer the detainees a significant opportunity to justify the reason that they got held under an incorrect interpretation of the law was to get instituted.
During the decision review, the alternative right should be implemented to correct any omissions contained in the law, gauge the governmental adequacy evidence and consider all the essential acquitting evidence. On the other hand, petitioners argued that the already established Detainee Treatment Act of 2005 failed to give the best alternative for the principle of habeas corpus (Internationalcrimesdatabase.org, 2019) . The Supreme Court also concluded that the detainees are exempted by law to expend all review methodologies in the court of appeal before tailing down actions of the principle in the lower courts. The court also established a distinction between de jure and de facto sovereignty. The court determined that the United States had created de facto autonomy in Guantanamo Bay (Encyclopedia Britannica, 2019) . In this case, the constitutional defenses of the right of habeas corpus would get applied in Guantanamo Bay in Cuba, as established.
According to Justice Souter, who was joined by Justices Ginsburg and Breyer, statutory habeas jurisdiction got concurrently eliminated by subsequent legislation. While basing their reasoning on the claims brought forward by the Guantanamo Bay detainees, they determined that the case was legally based on Jurisdiction, and was to get implemented or eradicated (Internationalcrimesdatabase.org, 2019) . Justice Souter furthered his argument by using case facts from Raul v. Bush case from the year 2004 that stated that by applying habeas corpus as a right to the detainees in the Military Naval Base in Cuba, there is consistency with the constitution and with the historical determination of the writ of habeas.
Justice Scalia argued that the Detainee Treatment Act provided adequate liberties guaranteed by the habeas corpus and therefore did not violate any rights of the detainees. It is only logical to say that it proved difficult to distinguish between a person who is an enemy combatant and who is not. The argument further states that if the Suspension Clause preserves the freedom of the writ for the detainees, then the differences between the Suspension Clause and the Military commissions act was bound to happen (James Oliphant, 2008) . Justice Scalia continued to say that the Court’s majority proved to be skeptical in the sense that it failed to determine whether the writ extended to other detainees abroad.
According to Chief Justice Robert, the Majority’s decision was controversial in the sense that the whole issue to get determined was whether the detainees were entitled to Suspension Clause Rights. This issue was unresolved, and if they did, then those rights did not violated in any way. He focused on whether the Detainee Treatment Act was a sufficient substitute for the right guaranteed in the constitution to be present during their trial.
Aftermath
After a critical review of all the case files, the justice Richard J. Leon gave an order that five detainees including Boumediene, get released. President Obama amended the Military Commissions Act of 2006 on October 28 th of the year 2009, he went ahead and signed the Military Commissions Act in 2009. Following the above developments new rules got provided for handling commission trials.
References
"Al Odah v United States" . Center for Constitutional Rights . April 27, 2005.
"Guantanamo Prisoner Released To Relatives In France" . RTT News. 2009-05-15. Archived from original on 2011-07-21.
James Oliphant (June 12, 2008). "Court backs Gitmo detainees" . Baltimore Sun . Archived from the original on 2008-06-12. Retrieved 2008-06-12.
Internationalcrimesdatabase.org. (2019). ICD - Boumediene v. Bush - Asser Institute . [online] Available at: http://www.internationalcrimesdatabase.org/Case/893 [Accessed 5 Apr. 2019].
Encyclopedia Britannica. (2019). Boumediene v. Bush | law case . [online] Available at: https://www.britannica.com/event/Boumediene-v-Bush [Accessed 5 Apr. 2019].
