IP: Right and Wrong (read especially if you have a USA Green Card)

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

<snip>

The extraordinary sweep of the Bush order has not been widely understood — 
not by some commentators who have defended it, I suspect. It covers 
millions of resident aliens in this country: people with green cards. Any 
one of them could be brought before a military tribunal, instead of a 
regular court, if the president said he or she has "aided" terrorism or 
"harbored" a terrorist.

The trials by military commission would lack what most Americans would 
regard as essentials of fairness.

• Military officers, who are dependent on their superiors for promotion, 
would act as judge and jury.

• A two-thirds vote of commission members present at the time would be 
sufficient to convict — and to impose any sentence.

• The defendant could be barred, on security grounds, from seeing the 
evidence against him.

• The defendant could not appeal to "any court of the United States or any 
state."

• The trials could be held in secret.

What confidence could the world have in the justice of such a proceeding? 
Such confidence is crucial. The Nuremberg trials of Nazi leaders, in open 
court before an international tribunal, had a profound long-term effect in 
bringing Germans back to democracy and humanity.

If Mr. Bush's order had been limited to suspected foreign terrorists 
captured in Afghanistan or other foreign countries, it would have been more 
persuasive legally. It would parallel the use of a military commission to 
try Nazi saboteurs who were landed in the U.S. by submarine in World War II 
— a use upheld by the Supreme Court.

Sweeping millions of resident aliens under the order seems to violate the 
principle that civilians should not be subject to military law in this 
country. The Supreme Court held that imposing martial law in Hawaii in 
World War II was unconstitutional.

<snip>

http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/24/opinion/24LEWI.html


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