The AP newswire reported that John Roberts was one of the pivotal judges approving the President's much debated military tribunals for terror suspects. Within months of approving Bush's case, Roberts' was appointed to the Supreme Court. Whether or not you agree with Roberts as an appointee, all should be considered about such obvious political payoffs.
High Court Asked to Take Guantanamo Case (AP)
(8/9/2005)
WASHINGTON - Lawyers for a Guantanamo detainee asked the Supreme Court on Monday to consider blocking military tribunals for terror suspects, and overturn what they called an extreme ruling by high-court nominee John Roberts.
Roberts was on a three-judge federal appeals court panel that last month ruled against Salim Ahmed Hamdan, a Yemeni who once was al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden's driver.
Hamdan's attorneys told justices that the appeals court gave the White House authority "to circumvent the federal courts and time-tested limits on the executive."
"No decision, by any court, in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks has gone this far," wrote Hamdan attorney Neal Katyal, a law professor at Georgetown University.
The Pentagon maintains it has the authority to hold military commissions, or tribunals, for terror suspects like Hamdan who were captured overseas and are now being held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
A lower-court judge ruled against the government, but Roberts and two other judges on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit disagreed. That opinion was written by Judge A. Raymond Randolph, who was named to the court by the first President Bush.
The ruling was handed down shortly before Roberts was named to the Supreme Court, to replace retiring Justice Sandra Day O'Connor.
O'Connor has been skeptical of government wartime powers. In 2004, she wrote that "a state of war is not a blank check for the president when it comes to the rights of the nation's citizens."
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