Bush Forced Ruling on Detainees

President Bush forced the Supreme Court’s hand by overplaying his own over Guantanamo detainees, Stuart Taylor, Jr. writes in Newsweek. Courts usually defer to Washington on national security, but Bush so flouted ordinary "ideas of justice and liberty" that he "put the Supreme Court in an impossible position." Stuck with detainees who say they are innocent, justices have granted them full access to federal courts.

Now the court has created "a new set of problems by making rules on a slow, messy, case-by-case basis. The only clear outcome is the certainty of enduring confusion: by trying to sidestep the most basic legal protections for detainees at the outset, the Bush administration guaranteed years of legal wrangling.” (More Guantanamo Bay stories.)