Explainhowthecourtshaverespondedtoexecutivepowerthroughinterpretationofthelaw

Question

What will be an ideal response?

Answer 1

The courts frequently limit presidential power through interpretations of the law. For example, one of the first issues related to executive power and 9/11 involved the detention of enemy combatants at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. The government contended that it could try the defendants in special military tribunals, apart from normal criminal prosecutions and military law. Judges were not swayed by this argument. Both civilian and military courts, using similar language, handed down decisions blocking the government's efforts to establish special military courts that violate the civil rights established in the American legal system (Bravin, 2007). In the Hamdi case, discussed earlier in this chapter, courts noted that all defendants were entitled to contest the basis of their arrests and this right applied to the suspect. To ensure that an arrest is justified by probable cause, the government cannot hold a person without a hearing. There are several other cases in which courts have limited executive power. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the detainees at Guantánamo could contest the charges against them. In 2006, the courts ordered the government to transfer Jose Padilla, the American originally accused of conspiring to use a dirty bomb, from the military to the civilian criminal court system, where he was convicted of criminal conspiracy in 2007 . Later in 2006, the Supreme Court declared that the military tribunal system established for enemy combatants was illegal. In 2007, a military court in Guantánamo dismissed cases against two defendants at Guantánamo Bay on the basis of the earlier Supreme Court decisions