Prof. Peter Shane of the Ohio State University law school reminds us that, "In November, 2009, Attorney General Holder told Congress, "the venue in which we are most likely to obtain justice for the American people is in federal court.'
He's right," says Prof. Shane.
He continues: "Although the Commission system has been significantly improved through the Military Commissions Act of 2009, it will always be seen as offering a kind of second-class justice, and it is by no means obvious that anyone will be convicted through the Commission system who could not otherwise be prosecuted in federal court."
Finally, veteran human rights defender Chip Pitts tells Prism, "The administration mishandled Congressional relations in ways that undoubtedly made it harder for President Obama to keep his campaign promises to close Gitmo and move away from military commissions, but its continued failure to deploy serious political capital on the entire cluster of domestic rule-of-law and human rights issues remains short-sighted."
He continues: "Fears of trying these suspects in regular American courts are unfounded and unworthy of the "land of the free and home of the brave', and make terror a self-fulfilling prophecy."
Then Pitts asks, "Might America really execute an individual the US government tortured, on hearsay evidence, in illegal tribunals designed to convict, without a full and fair trial? "
Pitts concludes: "The only reason to have second-class systems of justice is to dispense second-class justice. Especially when it comes to political offenses like terrorism, such tribunals affirm rather than refute the terrorists' claims that the dominant system is unjust. The very existence of such tribunals thus undermines both the rule of law and effective counter-terrorism, which is why (until they were resurrected by George W. Bush and his cohorts) the United States routinely condemned them, and it's why such tribunals were increasingly relegated to historical works about the Dark Ages or novels like 1984 about a dystopian future. Now, that dystopian future is here."
Chip Pitts is the former head of Amnesty USA and currently a law lecturer at Stanford and Oxford Universities.
Next Page 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6
(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
