On The Front Lines
TRI Asks U.S. Supreme Court to Determine Constitutionality of President's Power to Detain 'Enemy Combatant'
_______________________________________WASHINGTON--Attorneys with The Rutherford Institute, People for the American Way and Human Rights First (formally the Lawyers Committee for Human Rights) have filed a "friend of the court" brief in the U.S. Supreme Court on behalf of Jose Padilla, a U.S. citizen whom the Bush administration has labeled an "enemy combatant" and accused of plotting to detonate a "dirty bomb." The brief challenges the Bush administration's right to hold Padilla indefinitely without charge because he is suspected of being an "enemy combatant." The brief filed by the bipartisan coalition of organizations argues that while "[o]ur nation has repeatedly faced perilous threats to its security and even its survival....not only from aliens, but from citizens who, through espionage, treason, bombings, and other overt and covert acts of violence, have taken the lives of fellow citizens and threatened to destroy the nation," the threat we face today, though undeniably grave, is not unprecedented. "What is unprecedented," states the brief, "is the executive branch's claim of a unilateral power to detain citizens it deems to be 'enemy combatants.'" A PDF of the "friend of the court" brief is available here.
FBI officials arrested Jose Padilla at Chicago's O'Hare International Airport on May 8, 2002, as a material witness in a plot to detonate a "dirty bomb" in the United States. Held in solitary confinement in a military brig in South Carolina since June 9, 2002, when President Bush declared him to be an "enemy combatant," Padilla has yet to be charged with a crime. In July 2003, a bipartisan coalition of organizations that included The Rutherford Institute filed a "friend of the court" brief on behalf of Padilla in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. Citing the Constitution's ban against indefinite executive detention, the public interest groups argued that "[t]he Framers deliberately vested the Legislature with the power to make law, and denied to the Executive any unilateral authority to determine when people may be detained indefinitely without charge. The Constitution gives the Legislature--and only the Legislature--power to determine when, if ever, extraordinary circumstances authorize the fundamentally intrusive power of detention without charge." In delivering its ruling, the Second Circuit declared that only Congress can authorize the detention without charge of American citizens seized on American soil. In response to a subsequent appeal by the Bush administration, the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to hear the case. Oral arguments are scheduled for April 28, with a ruling expected in late June. Earlier this year, the Pentagon announced its decision to allow Padilla to see a lawyer.
"We hope the U.S. Supreme Court recognizes that the Bush administration's practice of jailing U.S. citizens without charge, no matter what they are suspected of, is beyond their authority," stated John W. Whitehead, president of The Rutherford Institute. "Not only are executive detentions banned by our Constitution, but they are an affront to everything America stands for. Our constitutional rights and freedoms must apply to all citizens, not just to those to whom our government decides to grant them."
The Rutherford Institute is an international, nonprofit civil liberties organization committed to defending constitutional and human rights.
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