The consequences of the stacking of the Supreme Court of the United States with right wing judges became apparent yesterday, when the court refused to consider the cases of prisoners of war who are being put on trial in a frightening new system of kangaroo courts. These courts have a new kind of trial, authorized by the Military Commissions Act, that replaces ordinary standards of justice with the kind of absurd Orwellian tactics we would expect from nations ruled by dictators.

Hearsay evidence and evidence obtained through torture are admissable. Defendants do not have full legal representation. The representative that defendants do have are not allowed to be present at the trial at all time, and neither is the defendant, who is not even allowed to examine, much less refute, all the evidence against himself. This comes after the defendant has been imprisoned as a criminal, but without habeas corpus rights, and so without adequate ability to gather relevant witnesses and other forms of evidence for his defense. Defendants are now put through their trial with the presumption that they are guilty, not with a presumption of innocence.

In short, the new system of trials allowed under the Military Commissions Act rips the justice out of the American courtroom. These trials betray the Constitution, and the liberty that is the core of our democracy. Worse than that, the Military Commissions Act that establishes these outrageous trials undoes the system of common law that was established hundreds of years before the United States, but was protected by the Ninth Amendment to the Constitution in the Bill of Rights, which reads, “The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.”

If ever there was a law that needs to be reviewed by the Supreme Court of the United States, it is the Military Commissions Act. The Military Commissions Act is killing American freedom, and replacing the rule of law with lawless rule by the powerful.

However, the Supreme Court decided yesterday not to consider the law. The majority of justices on the court declared that they just aren’t interested in dealing with the most serious threats to the legal foundations of American liberty in more than a generation. Not at this time. Maybe later. Someday. Perhaps.

Only three justices, Stephen Breyer, David Souter, and Ruth Bader Ginsburg, voted in favor of considering the constitutionality of the Military Commissions Act. If they had had two more votes, they would have been in the majority. Those two votes would have been supplied if we had elected a progressive President in 2004.

For the sake of our freedom, we must not repeat the mistake of 2004 in 2008.

(Source: Christian Science Monitor, May 1, 2007)