Imperial Judiciary Goes Global

In 2004, the Supreme Court sowed the seeds for a national-security upheaval when it ruled, in Rasul v. Bush, that war prisoners held outside the United States had a right to challenge their detentions in federal court.

Last year, in Boumediene v. Bush, the justices continued the seismic shift, holding that the right they had invented in Rasul — a right extended to aliens whose only connection to the United States is in waging war against it — was somehow rooted in our Constitution.

Thursday, the inevitable earthquake struck as a federal court in Washington took the imperial judiciary global. Though Rasul and Boumediene involved only the detainees held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, Judge John D. Bates ruled that alien combatants detained by our military in Bagram, Afghanistan — an active combat zone — are entitled to petition the federal courts for their release.

Let’s be clear about what this means. Judge Bates is saying that, under the Supreme Court’s rulings, the jurisdiction of the federal judiciary extends everywhere in the world, without limitation, and it includes the power to micromanage wars as they are being fought.

[Our Judiciary dysfunction has reached crisis level - something must be done to reign in these self-appointed demi-gods.]

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