I beg to differ

The Economist has an interesting piece this week on post-9/11 civil liberties in America. The author, Harold Hongju Koh, is a professor of international law at Yale, and he quite predictably rips the administration. Most interestingly, perhaps, he argues that, when considering the rights of detainees in the war on terror, the Supreme Court should strive to be more in tune with international law standards, as he urged in an amicus brief in Lawrence.

[W]hen the September 11th cases get to the Supreme Court, American human-rights lawyers can similarly argue that the legality of our policies must be evaluated by “values we [Americans] share with a wider civilisation”. Citing Lawrence, human-rights advocates can urge the court to decide whether the rights being asserted by detainees like Mr Hamdi, Mr Padilla and those on Guantánamo “have been accepted as an integral part of human freedom in many other countries” and can argue that our government has not demonstrated “that the governmental interest in circumscribing [these freedoms] is somehow more legitimate or ugent” in the United States than in other countries that have seen fit to forgo such legal restrictions.

Here's hoping the Court rejects this reasoning, but given that it accepted similar logic in Lawrence, I am not getting ahead of myself.
- posted by Anonymous @ 7:46 PM