SCOTUSBlog has the breaking news:
In a stunning blow to the Bush Administration in its war-on-terrorism policies, the Supreme Court ruled Thursday that foreign nationals held at Guantanamo Bay have a right to pursue habeas challenges to their detention. The Court, dividing 5-4, ruled that Congress had not validly taken away habeas rights.
The consolidated cases are Boumediene v. Bush and Al-Odah v. Bush, where the DC Circuit Court of Appeals had upheld the Military Commissions Act of 2006. Background here.
Justice Kennedy's opinion (with syllabus) is here. Chief Justice Roberts and Justices Scalia, Thomas, and Alito dissented.
Money quotes:
Security depends upon a sophisticated intelligence apparatus and the ability of our Armed Forces to act and to interdict. There are further considerations, however. Security subsists, too, in fidelity to freedom’s first principles. Chief among these are freedom from arbitrary and unlawful restraint and the personal liberty that is secured by adherence to the separation of powers. It is from these principles that the judicial authority to consider petitions for habeas corpus relief derives.
The laws and Constitution are designed to survive, and remain in force, in extraordinary times. Liberty and security can be reconciled; and in our system they are reconciled within the framework of the law. The Framers decided that habeas corpus, a right of first importance, must be a part of that framework, a part of that law.
Note: there's some confusion about which Act the Court reviewed today. It was the Military Commissions Act of 2006 that stripped habeas and which to that extent was declared unconstitutional:
Congress has enacted a statute, the Detainee Treatment Act of 2005 (DTA), 119 Stat. 2739, that provides certain procedures for review of the detainees’ status. We hold that those procedures are not an adequate and effective substitute for habeas corpus. Therefore §7 of the Military Commissions Act of 2006 (MCA), 28 U. S. C. A. §2241(e) (Supp. 2007), operates as an unconstitutional suspension of the writ.
The Detainee Treatment Act of 2005 also suspended habeas for Guantanamo detainees but was superseded by the MCA. The Court did not address any separate due process challenge to the Detainee Treatment Act of 2005. Those commissions will proceed, but detainees will get to challenge their detentions in federal courts.