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The Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) leads the legal struggle for justice at Guantanamo. It wants the facility shut. It defends lawlessly held detainees. It's done so for over a decade. It sent the first habeas attorney there.
It helped win the historic Boumediene v. Bush Supreme Court case. It affirmed Guantanamo detainee habeas rights. It lets them petition for release from lawlessly imposed custody.
It's done them no good. Obama enforces police state harshness. He does so at home and abroad. Justice Anthony Kennedy disagrees. He wrote the majority Boumediene opinion.
He said America maintains complete jurisdiction over Guantanamo regardless of its offshore location. He's against political branches "govern(ing) without legal restraint."
He expressed concern about usurping "power to switch the Constitution on or off at will." Doing so "lead(s) to a regime in which they, not this Court, say 'what the law is.' "
"Even when the United States acts outside its borders, its powers are not 'absolute and unlimited' but are subject 'to such restrictions as are expressed in the Constitution."
He called habeas "an indispensable mechanism for monitoring the separation of powers."
"The test for determining (its) scope must not be subject to manipulation by those whose power it is designed to restrain."
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