American Justice (No 1 in a series of Oxymorons)

Many aspects of American law are pretty well anaethema to us - in fact, in general terms there are a number of features of the US legal system which we could fairly say fail the test of a civilized society, eg 1) People own and carry guns (and guns are sold to children in the Post Office and the children then blow each others heads off) 2) Creationism is taught in many schools as though it was equal or superior to evolution theory. 3) Abortion is illegal in many states 4) Execution of prisoners is routine 5) Detention of prisoners without trial is routine 6) Torture of prisoners is routine and confessions thus obtained are admissable as evidence 7) Kidnap of foreign citizens from foreign countries is routine 8) Bombing of foreign countries in pursuit of foreign policy objectives is routine 9) Invasion of foreign countries is routine etc etc Much of the blame for this lies at the door of the US Supreme Court. That Court is, in particular, directly to blame for the fact that the current President Bush is in office at all, it having ignored the wish of the Florida electorate and awarded victory to the lunatic Bush. If one agrees with the famous dictum that, with the election of Dubya, the global village acquired its own global village idiot, then the Supreme Court was the idiot's sire . As a consequence, the current violent state of the entire world is partially attributable to that Court. One of the leading judges on the court is Justice Antonin Scalia, and he was pretty instrumental in electing Bush. The Supreme Court (including Scalia) will this week have to rule on matters involving the rights of Guantanamo detainees. Against that backgound, I was interested to read the following on a US law website: Just over two weeks ago, on March 8th, Justice Scalia gave a speech at the University of Fribourg in Switzerland. Justice Scalia is characteristically combative and provocative. For instance, in response to a question about Bush v. Gore, he responds: "Come on, get over it." He states that the real question in the case was whether the election was to be decided by the Florida Supreme Court or by the U.S. Supreme Court -- "not a very hard question," in his view -- and "there was no way we could have turned that case down." He then states that the Florida Supreme Court -- but not the U.S. Supreme Court -- was "politically motivated." And in response to a question about affording constitutional rights to Guantanamo detainees, he states unequivocally that "foreigners, in foreign countries, have no rights under the American Constitution" and that "nobody has ever thought otherwise." Of potential relevance to the current docket, in answer to one question from the audience, Justice Scalia expresses incredulity at the notion that detainees captured "on the battlefield" should receive a trial in civil courts". It is, he says, a "crazy idea." To a follow-up question about the Geneva Conventions and other human rights treaties, he responds with evident disdain: "What do they mean? They mean almost anything." The questioner then refers again to a hypothetical Guantanamo detainee, at which point Justice Scalia interjects: "If he was captured by my army on a battlefield, that is where he belongs. I had a son on that battlefield and they were shooting at my son. And I am not about to give this man who was captured in a war a full jury trial. I mean it's crazy." This coming Tuesday, the Court will hear arguments in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld, a case in which the questions include, among other things, whether a detainee held at Guantanamo can be tried for an alleged violation of war in the Pentagon's military tribunal instead of in a civilian court or by court-martial, and whether and to what extent the Geneva Conventions protect Guantanamo detainees. I don't think Mr Hamdan can place too much reliance on getting either the sympathy or the vote of Justice Scalia.