What about the Military tribunals?

The controversy of military tribunals is a very hot and rather old topic. The argument goes back as far as the american civil war.



Lambden P. Milligan was sentenced to death by a military commission in Indiana during the Civil War; he had engaged in acts of disloyalty. Milligan sought release through habeas corpus from a federal court.


Habeas Corpus is a gaurantee that you will not be held against your will by authorities for no good reason. If you request to know why you are being held (habeas corpus) and it is insufficient to hold you the authorities must set you free. .essentially habeas corpus is a legal action, or writ, through which a person can seek relief from their unlawful detention or that of another person. It protects individuals from harming themselves or from being harmed by the judicial system. Of English origin, the writ of habeas corpus has historically been an important instrument for the safeguarding of individual freedom against arbitrary state action.


This was the defense used in the supreme court case of Lambden P. Milligan.


The Supreme Court decided that the suspension of habeas corpus was lawful, but military tribunals did not apply to citizens in states that had upheld the authority of the Constitution and where civilian courts were still operating, and the Constitution of the United States provided for suspension of habeas corpus only if these courts are actually forced closed. In essence, the Court ruled that military tribunals could not try civilians in areas where civil courts were open, even during times of war.


It observed further that during the suspension of the writ of habeas corpus, citizens may be only held without charges, not tried, and certainly not executed by military tribunals. After all, the writ of habeas corpus is not the right itself but merely the ability to issue orders demanding the right's enforcement.


It is important to note the political environment of the decision. Post-war, under a Republican Congress, the Court was reluctant to hand down any decision that questioned the legitimacy of military courts, especially in the occupied South. The President's ability to suspend habeas corpus independently of Congress, a central issue, was not addressed probably because it was moot with respect to the case at hand. Though President Lincoln suspended the writ nationwide on September 24, 1862, Congress ratified almost six months later, on March 3, 1863. Milligan was detained in 1864, well after Congress formally suspended the writ. That notwithstanding, military jurisdiction had been limited.


Here is a section of the constitution.






From the constitution:


The privilege of the Writ of Habeas Corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in Cases of Rebellion or Invasion the public Safety may require it.


This was the only right of an individual so important that the crafters of the constitution placed this statement in the body of the document. All others were included in the bill of rights.


President George W. Bush ordered that certain detainees imprisoned at the Naval base at Guantanamo Bay were to be tried by military commissions. This decision sparked controversy and litigation. On June 29, 2006, the U.S. Supreme Court limited the power of the Bush administration to conduct military tribunals to suspected terrorists at Guantánamo Bay.


In December 2006, the Military Commissions Act of 2006 was passed and authorized the establishment of military commissions subject to certain requirements and with a designated system of appealing those decisions. A military commission system addressing objections identified by the U.S. Supreme Court was then established by the Department of Defense. Litigation concerning the establishment of this system is ongoing.[3][4] As of June 13, 2007, the appellate body in this military commission system had not yet been constituted.


Three cases had been commenced in the new system, as of June 13, 2007. One detainee, David Matthew Hicks plea bargained and was sent to Australia to serve a nine-month sentence.[5] Two cases were dismissed without prejudice because the tribunal believed that the men charged had not been properly determined to be persons within the commission's jurisdiction on June 4, 2007, and the military prosecutors asked the commission to reconsider that decision on June 8, 2007. [6] One of the dismissed cases involved Omar Ahmed Khadr, who was captured at age 15 in Afghanistan after having allegedly killed a U.S. soldier with a grenade. The other dismissed case involved Salim Ahmed Hamdan who is alleged to have been Osama bin Laden's driver and is the lead plaintiff in a key series of cases challenging the military commission system. The system is in limbo until the jurisdictional issues addressed in the early cases are resolved.


section 10 #836 of the us code


(a) Pretrial, trial, and post-trial procedures, including modes of proof, for cases arising under this chapter triable in courts- martial, military commissions and other military tribunals, and procedures for courts of inquiry, may be prescribed by the President by regulations which shall, so far as he considers practicable, apply the principles of law and the rules of evidence generally recognized in the trial of criminal cases in the United States district courts, but which may not, except as provided in chapter 47A of this title, be contrary to or inconsistent with this chapter. (b) All rules and regulations made under this article shall be uniform insofar as practicable, except insofar as applicable to military commissions established under chapter 47A of this






It was this code that president used to institute the executive order convening the military tribunal for all the 9/11 terrorists.


He did not act as if it were just out of the blue to push these military tribunals’ there was a presidence in the Us code


section 10 #836 of the us code


(a) Pretrial, trial, and post-trial procedures, including modes of proof, for cases arising under this chapter triable in courts- martial, military commissions and other military tribunals, and procedures for courts of inquiry, may be prescribed by the President by regulations which shall, so far as he considers practicable, apply the principles of law and the rules of evidence generally recognized in the trial of criminal cases in the United States district courts, but which may not, except as provided in chapter 47A of this title, be contrary to or inconsistent with this chapter. (b) All rules and regulations made under this article shall be uniform insofar as practicable, except insofar as applicable to military commissions established under chapter 47A of this






It was this code that president used to institute the executive order convening the military tribunal for all the 9/11 terrorists.






This code does one of two things, it gave bush the ability and precedence to create the tribunals but it I believe also gives the Obama admin the ability to use the civil courts if they see fit.


It does however stir up one very real controversial point. The congress passed the bill allowing the tribunals. Largely a democratic congress at the time. They are doing there level best to distance themselves from complicit culpability but we as intelligent Americans’ actually do know better.






Is it right or wrong I’m not sure. There are actually valid reasons on both side’s of the fence. I do not think that this issue is a fight about policy. Because policy can be possibly interpreted to lean in either direction. This is a fight of feelings and beliefs. Because of how passionately you feel about 9/11. And it was the first effectual attack on Us continental soil. Although not the first. There is in fact a WW II attack by the Japanese of bombs, floated by balloons across the jet stream, a lone seaplane attacking mount Emily Oregon, a single submarine attacked fort Stevens at the mouth of the Columbia river.

I personally think that we should get all of the intelligence out of terrorists as possible. I’m not sure about the methods used. But I do think that the democrats as a general rule and more specifically Janet Napolitano, who has used terms to describe the terrorist shooting at fort hood as a man made disaster, anything but a war on terrorism, should take the threat of terrorism at least seemingly more serious.