Supreme Court Has Chance to Make Significant Law Regarding War on Terror !

[AGENDA21]

DURHAM, N.C., March 22 (AScribe Newswire) -- Hamdan v. Rumsfeld, which will be argued before the Supreme Court March 28, stands to be a key case in the war on terror, said Scott Silliman, executive director of the Center on Law, Ethics and National Security at Duke University.

A central issue in the case is whether the president had the authority to set up military commissions to try detainees held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, said Silliman, professor of the practice of law at Duke. Salim Ahmed Hamdan, an alleged terrorist and former driver for Osama bin Laden, is held at the Guantanamo detention facility.

"Many of the cases which the administration is using to justify its policies regarding the detention and trial of enemy combatants in the war on terrorism were decided after World War II, which was a decidedly different context," Silliman said. "Hamdan gives the Court the opportunity to define this war on terrorism, to give us a more current view of the Constitutional authority of the president in this new type of war and the tools available to him in fighting it. These are terribly significant issues."

There is a chance the justices will decide they lack any jurisdiction to rule in the case, Silliman explained. The government is arguing that the Detainee Treatment Act, signed into law after the Court decided to hear Hamdan, takes away virtually all federal court jurisdiction for dealing with complaints from Guantanamo Bay detainees.

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