Within the Past Few Years, the Supreme Court Has Ruled

Essay

Within the past few years, the Supreme Court has ruled on a number of challenges to claim made by the administration of George W. Bush that it had the power to detain indefinitely U.S. citizens held as "enemy combatants"; and to detain indefinitely and try by military tribunal, without and with limited appeal, foreign nationals who had been seized on battlefields and held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. These cases-Hamdi v. Rumsfeld (2004), Rasul v. Bush (2004), Hamdan v. Rumsfeld (2006), and Boumediene v. Bush (2008)-illustrate well the basic constitutional dilemma in enforcing constraints on presidential power to wage war. Focusing primarily on the last two cases, discuss the Court's conclusions, explaining the applicable presidential directives, laws, treaties, writs, and precedents. To what extent do these cases demonstrate that restraints on presidential power to wage war remain in the hands of Congress?