Judge Richard Leon -- an appointee of George W. Bush -- issued a major ruling following the wake of the Supreme Court's Boumediene decision yesterday, ordering five Guantanamo detainees released "forthwith." He also added comments that echoed Souter's Boumediene concurrence:
The judge, in an unusual added comment, suggested to senior government leaders that they forgo an appeal of his ruling on freeing the five prisoners. While conceding that the government had a right to appeal that part of his ruling, Leon commented that he, too, had “a right to appeal” to leaders of the Justice Department, Central Intelligence Agency and other intelligence agencies, and his plea was that they look at the evidence regarding the five he was ordering released. “Seven years of waiting for our legal system to give them an answer to their legal question is enough,” he commented.
This brings the grand total of arbitrarily held detainees released by the federal courts to ... five. If I understand correctly, to many Republicans this means that out-of-control judicial activists are essentially running American foreign policy. In fairness, since when has scrutinizing wholly arbitrary executive detentions been considered a function of the judiciary?
--Scott Lemieux
