The Bush administration heard most of what it wanted to hear from the Supreme Court today, when the justices announced that it would not hear the Jose Padilla appeal. The decision was a victory for the White House, but only a partial one.
The Supreme Court handed the Bush administration a significant victory today when it decided not to review for now the government’s powers to detain U.S. citizens as enemy combatants.
The court, with two dissenters, acted in the case of Jose Padilla, who was held for three years in a military brig as a so-called “dirty bomber” after he was seized by authorities in Chicago. With Padilla’s case pending before the high court, the administration recently brought unrelated criminal charges against Padilla and had him transferred to conventional incarceration to await a conventional trial.
Since Padilla was no longer in detention limbo, the government argued that his case was moot and not appropriate for Supreme Court review.
On the other hand, as the indispensable Lyle Denniston explained, the high court did not close the door altogether.
The victory for the government was not an unqualified one, however. The Court implied that Padilla has a legitimate concern that the government — which repeatedly changed its handling of his status — may again return him to military custody; it said that his case raised major issues — including the role of the courts in dealing with presidential power, and it told all courts to stand ready to react quickly if the government again shifted Padilla’s status or custody, in order to protect the writ of habeas corpus.. It even indicated that he would have a right to pursue a new appeal solely in the Supreme Court if his status were to change again. None of those comments would seem to be welcome to the Administration.
The rest of Denniston’s analysis is here, and there’s some helpful background on the case here and here.