Letters to the Editor
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Scalia announces his views before oral arguments begin
Just like his fat hunter friend, Scalia has now become so drunk on his own power that he needs to be reined in. He IS compromising the credibility of the Supreme Court. If he does not recuse himself, and I bet that he won't, he should be denounced by his peers and colleagues.
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Scalia's Son...
It would've been nice to see the press ask the obvious question: if that same son were captured by the enemy, would you want them to imprison him without trial, torture, and possibly execute him? Why do our leaders seem to so easily forget that the Geneva Convention isn't some sort of liberal love-fest for our enemies, it's a reasonable pact to try to keep all sides from engaging in the most heinous and inhumane of behaviors, signed to protect our own soldiers.
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Scalia's obscene gestures
By the way, Scalia is as uncouth as Cheney. Peas in a pod, those two.
http://news.bostonherald.com/localRegional/view.bg?articleid=132311&format=text
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Scalia
His presence on the Supreme Court compromises its integrity!
His mouth just confirms it.
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Scalia's credibility: "Give me a break"
The Supreme court compromised its credibility when it overruled the Florida Supreme Court and selected Bush.
Scalia seems to rule based on his prejudices and desired outcomes most of the time, capriciously, not based on law or the Constitution. If he agrees with a state, then States Rights rule. If he doesn't like what the state is doing, then he invents something to overrule the statute in question. Same thing with congress. He doesn't seem to have a judicial philosophy with any intellectual honesty. What part of "ratified treaties are the highest law of the land" doesn't he understand? And, as someone else already said, has he never heard of blowback?
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Compromising the credibility of the court?
All depends on what the meaning of 'credibility' is. For many, Bush v. Gore (and Scalia's role in the run-up) marked the point where credibility could no longer be discerned in the court's majority, even in trace amounts. Others will recall the televised spectacle of Rehnquist arrayed in a uniform of his own design as he presided, with little apparent interest, over the constitutional mockery of the Clinton impeachment.
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Citizens vs. Non-citizens
So this case, Hamdan v. Rumsfeld, is about non-citizens' rights. Oddly enough, in the previous case, Hamdi v. Rumsfeld, Hamdi was a US citizen captured and the majority of the court ruled that even though he was a US citizen, he could be detained as an enemy combatant, but he should be able to dispute his status and have a hearing. O'Connor, in the majority opinion, wrtoe that since the war on terror has no foreseeable end, Hamdi could be detained indefinitely if a right to a hearing was not given.
And here's the suprise: in that case, an unholy alliance of STEVENS and SCALIA dissented and said that because he's a US citizen, he should either be released or tried in regular civilian court, like John Walker Lindh.
As much as i hate Scalia, that was a nice suprise from him. His recent comments refer only to non-citizen detainees.
Of course, that embarrassment to jurisprudence, Thomas, dissented on his own behalf in Hamdi, going further than the majority and saying that because it's a time of war, Hamdi had no rights whatsoever.
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Scalia is no Christian
From the people in the know:
http://www.born-again-christian.info/catholics.htm
Does George Bush know that a Satan cultist sits on the Supreme Court?
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No, give me a break Mr. Scalia
Mr. Scalia and his ilk need to make up their minds.
Either we are at war, in which case captured warriors are accorded treatment prescribed by the Geneva convention or we are not at war, in which case the people who are running amok are criminals and are accorded the treatment for criminals under the Consititution. Why do they have rights? They're being charged under US law. Make up your mind. Are they being charged here or in their home country?
Of course, what Mr. Scalia and his ilk want is to pick and choose what rules, if any, they will agree to follow. They do this by creating a third leg. Not a prisoner of war, not a criminal and not free.
Let the reign of terror begin. Vote for your template today! This will be like:
The French Revolution
Argentina
El Salvadore
Chile
The cultural revolution
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supreme credibility
It is impossible to "compromise the credibility" of the supreme court, because it has none. The court lost all credibility with Bush v. Gore, and has done nothing since to restore even a shred of credibility or dignity for that matter. Also, exactly what makes Stephen Gillers a "legal ethics expert?" Since the legal profession has no ethics, I see no reason why we need any experts on the subject.
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Scalia
Justice Scalia, for all his supposed jurisprudential "genius," obviously missed a class or two in law school. Particularly the ones involving ethics. I seem to remember once or twice a professor noting that the judge shouldn't be an advocate for anything but the unbiased application of the law to the facts. If the learned Justice wants to be an advocate for his now well known political views, he should step down from the court. Alternatively, he should shut his damn mouth. His written opinions are bad enough, we don't need to, and shouldn't, hear his pronouncements in other venues, too.
Tim Howe
Wauconda, IL
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Combatants?
When Scalia argues that combatants in World War II were not given the right of habeas corpus or a trial (outside of military jurisdiction), he is quite simply indulging in sophistry of the worst kind. In World War II, as with any declared war, most combatants could be easily distinguished from civilians. But regarding the "War against Terorism," without a fair trail, how would Scalia or anyone else know who is and who is not a combatant? Among those who have been arrested and detained in Iraq or taken from other countries to Guantanamo (or through rendition, taken to nations that allow torture) a great many seem to have no connection at all with terrorism or terrorists. Rather they have just found themselves in the wrong place at the wrong time. The only crime of one man who was arrested in Afghnaistan was that he was taken out of a Taliban prison by the North Alliance.
It seems to me that journlists should not allow Scalia's use of the word combatant to go unchallenged. It is the same argument that John Woo uses in defending his arguements that prisoners do not have the right of habeas corpus. Woo accompanies this reasoning with the argument that international Conventions which forbid torture should not apply to the treatment of prisoners at Guantanamo.
What rights do any of us have in this case? The inference of Scalia's arguement is that if you (or your neighbor, your brother or your sister) is suddenly labeled as a "combatant" you no longer have the right to be charged, the right to a fair trial, or to be represented in court by a lawyer of your choice. The American legal system, which has been carefully constructed over centuries out of common law, the US Constitution, law and legal precedent so that it will protect our rights, would no longer protect you.
If you want to see a court room procedure in which the accused has no rights, I recommend a film called Sophie Scholll, The Last Days. It follows the trial of three students who belonged to an organization called the White Rose, who during the Third Reich distributed leafletts critical of Hitler's war, and his policies, including his treatment of the disabled, Jews, Gypsies, all those persecuted and detained by the Nazi government. Though these students were committed to non-violence, they were labelled as "terrorists" by Hitler's court. They did have a court appointed lawyer, but he asked no questions and made no attempts at all to defend them. In that system, truly a system of terror, no one could challenge the findings of the court which was that the students were guilty of treason. They were all sentenced to death and executed. I'm afraid that Scalia's use of the vague term "combatant" leads us down a very bad road.