Home -> Law Blog Directory -> Constitutional Law Blogs -> Ninomania

Constitutional Law

: Ninomania

By David M. Wagner

I don't know when I'll have a chance to write something at length on Boumedienne, but:

1. It seems we are now the only country in the world that grants habeas corpus to prisoners of war, wherever or under whatever circumstances taken (is Guantanamo today different in any legally relevant sense from Germany during the Bulge?).

2. The constitutional hinge may be this:

[I]f the understood scope of the writ of habeas corpus was ?designed to restrain? (as the Court says) the actions of the Executive, the understood limits upon that scope were (as the Court seems not to grasp) just as much ?designed to restrain? the incursions of the Third Branch. ?Manipulation? of the territorial reach of the writ by the Judiciary poses just as much a threat to the proper separation of powers as ?manipulation? by the Executive. [Scalia, dissenting]

Full post as published by Ninomania on June 12, 2008 (boomark / email).