On The Front Lines
Institute Looks to High Court to Determine Constitutionality of Padilla Detention
Rutherford Institute Looks To U.S. Supreme Court To Determine Constitutionality of President's Power to Detain 'Enemy Combatant'WASHINGTON, D.C. -- In response to an appeal by the Bush administration, the U.S. Supreme Court has agreed to hear the case of a U.S. citizen whom the Bush administration has labeled an "enemy combatant" and accused of plotting to detonate a "dirty bomb." The high court has been asked to decide whether the Constitution allows the Bush administration to hold Jose Padilla indefinitely and without access to lawyers or courts because the administration suspects him of being an "enemy combatant." In July 2003, attorneys with The Rutherford Institute, the Cato Institute, the Center for National Security Studies, the Constitution Project, People for the American Way and the Lawyers Committee for Human Rights filed a friend of the court brief in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit on behalf of Padilla, challenging the administration's right to hold him indefinitely without charge. In a 2-1 ruling issued in December 2003, the appeals court held that only Congress can authorize the detention without charge of American citizens seized on American soil. The Bush administration asked the U.S. Supreme Court to hear the case on appeal. The Supreme Court is expected to hear Padilla's case in late April, with a ruling due by summer.
FBI officials arrested Jose Padilla at Chicago's O'Hare International Airport on May 8, 2002, as a material witness in a plot to detonate a "dirty bomb" in the United States. Held in solitary confinement in a military brig in South Carolina since June 9, 2002, when President Bush declared him to be an "enemy combatant," Padilla has yet to be charged with a crime. Citing the Constitution's ban against indefinite executive detention, The Rutherford Institute in conjunction with other public interest groups argued that "[t]he Framers deliberately vested the Legislature with the power to make law, and denied to the Executive any unilateral authority to determine when people may be detained indefinitely without charge. The Constitution gives the Legislature--and only the Legislature--power to determine when, if ever, extraordinary circumstances authorize the fundamentally intrusive power of detention without charge." The Pentagon recently announced that it will allow Padilla to see a lawyer.
"We are encouraged by the Supreme Court's decision to hear Jose Padilla's case," stated John W. Whitehead, president of The Rutherford Institute. "Jailing U.S. citizens without charge and without access to lawyers, no matter what they are suspected of, is an affront to everything that America and our Constitution stand for. We are hopeful that the court will firmly establish that the protections afforded by the Constitution fully apply to all citizens."
The Rutherford Institute is an international, nonprofit civil liberties organization committed to defending constitutional and human rights.
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