Rejecting the Bush administration’s arguments for national security and the 2006 Military Commission Act, the Supreme Court ruled today that the foreign terror suspects being held at the Guantanamo Bay prison may challenge their detentions in civilian federal court. In the Court’s 5-4 ruling, the majority stated that the Constitution does not permit Congress to suspend habeas corpus unless our country faces rebellion or invasion.

The decision, a stunning setback for the Bush presidency, is historical in that it defends individual liberties over national security, even in times of heightened precaution. The decision is also a marker of hope for many Americans who believe the system of checks and balances in the Constitution to be fatally flawed in light of the expansion of the executive branch’s powers since 9/11. The controversial ruling is also likely to become a campaign issue in the upcoming presidential election.

In his less-than-subtle minority opinion, Justice Antonin Scalia wrote that the United States is “at war with radical Islamists,” and that “the Nation will live to regret what the Court has done today. I dissent.” Writing independently from the other four Justices in the majority, Justice David Souter concluded that Scalia and the other dissenting justices did not fully grasp “the length of the disputed imprisonments, some of them represented here today having been locked up for six years.” Several of the detainees at Guantanamo have been held there on flimsy evidence, or by mere suspicion alone.

Although, as the Center for Constitutional Rights director Vincent Warren puts it, “The Supreme Court has finally brought down an end to one of our nation’s most egregious injustices,” the decision does not mean that the detainees will be released. Those questions will be left to the District Court judges set to hear the detainees’ challenges. In addition, the detainees are not allowed defense lawyers, but rather a “personal representative” assigned to each prisoner by the U.S. military.

- Erica Block