This is one of those rare Supreme Court decisions, maybe a few dozen at most in the history of the republic, that will be remembered and debated and taught -- and not because of Sept. 11 or terrorism or the war in Iraq. But because it goes straight to the question of just what sort of country we are. "It was stunning and dramatic and powerful," says Behar Azmy, one of a number of Seton Hall Law School professors who worked on the case that resulted in Thursday's decision affirming habeas corpus rights for inmates at Guantanamo.

The decision written by Associate Justice Anthony Kennedy -- representing the 5-4 majority that ruled that foreign detainees, held without charges, can appeal to a civilian court -- is long and scholarly and short on the sort of rhetorical flourishes often associated with dramatic cases. But, for all its investigation into the history of habeas corpus and questions about the operation of the so-called Suspension Clause, the basic ideas behind the ruling -- and the rights it upheld --
are simple:

What are the rights of persons accused by the government? Who gets to decide those rights? Who says what the law is? "It means, basically, that the government cannot deliberately put people beyond the reach of the Constitution and the laws of the United States," says Azmy. "The executive branch cannot be prosecution, judge, and jury and then take away the powers of the judicial branch," says the lawyer, whose client, Murat Kurnaz, a Turk born in Germany, was one of the litigants in the case.

He said he was especially concerned about what he believed was the infusion of politics into the dissent written by Associate Justice Antonin Scalia. Scalia warned the majority decision could lead to more American deaths. "Those words," says Gibbons, "will go down in history as one of the most outrageous examples of partisan politics in the history of the Supreme Court." Maybe. But the case -- Boumediene vs.Bush -- certainly will go down in history as one of the most important cases in American constitutional law.

SOURCE: Minneapolis Star Tribune