Obama, Guantanamo, Habeas Corpus, and the 6th Amendment

While Guantanamo detainees are not citizens of the U.S., and what to do with them was a tricky question, the complete suspension of habeas corpus and keeping them locked up forever with no due process was an affront to the basic ideas enshrined in both the Constitution and the bill of rights.

The idea of habeas corpus is fundamental because it suggests that, when you have an executive detention, there ought to be an opportunity for the individual detained to get an independent judicial assessment about whether the detention is legal.

Remember, habeas does not create a single right. It just says you can have a judge examine the legality of your detention. This is what the Supreme Court upheld at the end of its 2007 term (see: Boumediene v. Bush). Forty detainees have been held for more than six years without charges filed against them. Some detainees who deny being enemy combatants have never been given an opportunity to show their detention is unwarranted. To its credit, the Supreme Court has finally said "enough."

While I'm concerned about Obama's domestic economic policies (and would McCain's have been much better? Probably, but that's water over the dam), the one thing I'm really looking forward to is a reversal of the constitutional oversteps taken by the neo-conservatives in the past 8 years: