Seriously.
Especially with snarks like "any literate person should understand this", when as Stuart Benjamin at Volokh Conspiracy notes, "Bloggers (and others) can continue to say that the language of Common Article 3 simply cannot be read to apply to Al Qaeda. But not a single member of the Supreme Court agrees." Not "the activist Supreme Court majority", but all eight Justices, including Thomas. In fact, Thomas makes a specific point of this:
"[T]he Court, ... adopts its own, admittedly plausible, reading of Common Article 3."(Emphasis, of course, mine.)
Now, tell me again how I --- and all eight Justices --- are illiterate?
5 comments:
Oh come on.
these men are Supreme Court Justices and while I do not always agree with their decisions I have no intention of arguing the law with them.
What about WW2? The Nazis loaked up the Jews. Now obviously they had no right to do that. The Jews had never been fighters of any kind, but were civilians. Howeveer, I have heard people argue that the Germans violated the Geneva Convention in their treatment of the jews. I have heard the same thing in regard to the treatment of British and Aussies in that war. Now once again, these people were not terrorirsts, they were completely innocent..but the point is they were supposedly protected by the Geneva Convention.
If the point is that terrorists, since they are unlawful combatants and not POWs or innocent civilians exist in a world of their own where no rules exist..well I am not sure if the law can be read that way or not. But it seems to me that even if it could the Congress and the White House could between them create whatever laws are necessary to deal with this particular kind of individual.
But hey, don't let me get in the way of a good fight.
And David, Judge Thomas did something in this case that he has never done in 15 years. He read his dissent aloud. That gives you some eidea what side he is on in this debate.
i think the real point is
you don't show up at a gun fight
with a knife.
I simply disagree with Judge Thomas.
That's considerably different from claiming he's illiterate.
I only care about being logical.
Then look up the ad hominem fallacy.
David:
I haven't read the opinions with this issue in mind, so am evaluating the arguments between you and Seneca as they appear here.
I can only say based on 40 years experience in practicing law that sometimes no matter how much you want to reach a result, and no matter how much a result is dictated by logic, the language of a statute, treaty or another case simply won't permit you to reach that result.
This may be one of those situations, especially if the disparate views of the Justices on this Supreme Court coalesce in this conclusion.
i think the real point is
you don't show up at a gun fight
with a knife.
I even agree. But that's hardly what we're doing. I even agree that this decision didn't go entirely the way I might hope. But look at what it actually did:
* it affirmed that the resolution following 9/11 empowered the President as it might in time of war; it for all przactial purposes affirmed that the resolutions were a "declaration of war". It won't stop the left from claiming it's an illegal war, but their case has gotten awfully weak.
* it affirmed that the detainees can be held as long as hostilities continue ... which, by the way, is argued in part by reference to the GC.
* it came as close as the Supreme Court ever does to actually advising the Persident that the only issue in their minds is that for a court to be "regularly constituted", there has to be an actual enabling statute ... which even the Dem leadership immediately said they're pass.
I just think if we're going to run in circles, scream, and shout, we ought to pick a decision that didn't actually come out so much to the good.
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