Fruits Of The Judicial Intervention In The War On Terror

Lawyers are beginning to answer the Supreme Court's call for judicial oversight of the war on terror (see Rasul v. Bush and my post below). As they flock to Guantanamo Bay to help captured foreign nationals resist our country's military and intelligence efforts, we catch glimpses of what a war subject to domestic legal niceties will look like.

The New York Times documents some of the deleterious effects of a lawyer-run war effort. Its report notes:

"The influx of defense lawyers at Guantánamo Bay also seems to have had some impact on the character of the detention facility. Some of the lawyers say that it was likely a factor in the authorities' decision to end most of the interrogations in recent months."

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"Maj. Gen. Geoffrey C. Miller, who was the commander of the base for nearly three years, until August 2003, said during his tenure that the system was designed to make the prisoners as compliant as possible in order to make them thoroughly dependent on their interrogators. An important ingredient in accomplishing that, he and other military officials at the base said, was isolation from the outside world.

"The arrival of defense lawyers at Guantánamo is an irreversible disruption of that isolation. The lawyers represent the detainees' access not only to federal courts but also to the international news media; the only other authorized visitors, foreign officials and representatives of the Red Cross, do not generally speak publicly about the detainees."

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"Scott Sullivan, a lawyer with Allen & Overy, said that after reviewing the evidence against one of the Yemenis who was arrested in Pakistan, including classified documents, he concluded that 'there was nothing to support the case that he was an enemy combatant.'"

So far, then, the net effect of the Supreme Court's newly acquired war-oversight authority is that interrogations have decreased, enemy detainees receive aid and comfort from American lawyers, and some attorney from Allen & Overy, after reviewing classified documents, is sharing his opinion with the world on whether they justify the detention of his client.

Thanks, SCOTUS.