Okay, so knowing LITERALLY no more about it than is said here:
Quote:
On January 11, 2008, the Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit dismissed the case. The court affirmed the district court's dismissal of the constitutional and international law claims, and reversed the district court's decision that the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA) applied to Guantanamo detainees, dismissing those claims as well. On December 15, 2008, the U.S. Supreme Court granted the plaintiffs' petition for certiorari, vacated the judgment and remanded the case to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit for further consideration in light of Boumediene v. Bush.
On April 24, 2009, the Court of Appeals came to the same conclusion it had reached prior to Boumediene, this time justifying its dismissal of the case largely on "qualified immunity" grounds — that is, on the notion that courts had not clearly established that the torture and religious abuse of Guantanamo detainees was prohibited at the time those abuses were being carried out against our clients. Plaintiffs sought review of this opinion in the Supreme Court, but on December 14, 2009, the Supreme Court declined to accept the case.
|
If you actually READ that, what happened is, four detainees sued Rumsfeld personally for being the victim of interrogation techniques that they claimed were illegal. The case was dismissed in District Court, and the Court of Appeals upheld the dismissal. Then the Supreme Court ordered it back to the Court of Appeals on the basis of a decision they made in a different case.
The Court of Appeals didn't reverse themselves on the basis of the new Supreme Court decision, holding that at the time, the illegality of these interrogation techniques wasn't established in court. When the case was brought before the Supreme Court, they declined to hear it for the second time.
How this adds up to a 3000-word blog post about Obama gutting due process, I'm ENTIRELY unclear.
Also, if you look a little further than the synopsis:
Quote:
|
After a brief extension of time for filing, on August 24, 2009, Plaintiffs filed their cert petition. The government filed its response on November 13, 2009, which notably does not explicitly argue that Guantanamo detainees should be held to enjoy no constitutional rights, but only noted in its view several courts had stated as much.
|
So... Did the author of that 3000-word blog post not read the whole timeline of the case?
To be honest, I'm not sure he knows what he's talking about at all. He never mentions this case by name, or any of the actual facts of the case. He spends a LOT of pixels on what the "decision" (it wasn't a decision actually) "means" (although it doesn't as far as my non-lawyer reading can tell mean any such thing). But he doesn't have the rudiments of the case together. I'm not even sure Rasul v. Rumsfeld is the one he's talking about!
So... Is there any "there" there? I don't see any.
EDIT: To be clear, I believe this outcome to be a miscarriage of justice. But to turn it into "Obama guts due process" is absurd. I'm not happy with how the man is handling security and terrorism issues, but JESUS people. Not every leaf falling from every tree validates your political viewpoint.