Remarks Of Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.),
Chairman, Senate Judiciary Committee,
“Day Of Action To Restore Law And Justice”
Upper Senate Park
Capitol Hill
June 26, 2007
Last year, Congress committed an historic
mistake by suspending the Great Writ of habeas corpus — not just for
those confined at Guantanamo, but for millions of legal residents in the
United States. I am working with Senator Specter, and several other
Senate and House members – some here today – to try to right this wrong
and restore a basic protection to American law.
Today, we mark a “Day of Action to
Restore Law and Justice.” Restoring habeas corpus is a starting point
for doing just that. We need your help to be successful.
Habeas corpus was recklessly undermined in last year’s Military
Commissions Act. Like the internment of Japanese Americans during World
War II, the elimination of habeas rights was an action driven by fear
and a stain on America’s reputation in the world. This is a time of
testing. Future generations will look back to examine the choices we
made – the choices we made during a time when security too often is used
as a watchword to convince us to slacken our defense of liberty and the
rule of law.
Habeas corpus guarantees an opportunity to go to court and challenge the
abuse of power by the Government. The Military Commissions Act rolled
back these protections by eliminating that right, permanently, for any
non-citizen labeled an enemy combatant – even someone “awaiting”
determination of that status.
The sweep of this habeas provision goes far beyond the few hundred
detainees currently held at Guantanamo Bay, and includes an estimated 12
million lawful permanent residents in the United States today. These
are people who work and pay taxes, people who abide by our laws and
should be entitled to fair treatment. Under this law, any of these
people can be detained, forever, without any ability to challenge their
detention in court.
Since last fall, I have been talking about a nightmare scenario. It
involved a hard-working legal permanent resident picked up on a tenuous
factual basis, who could be held with no ability to go to court to plead
his or her innocence – for years, for decades, forever.
Last November, just after enactment of
these provisions, the Department of Justice confirmed this sad scenario
in a legal brief submitted in federal court in Virginia. They asserted
that the Military Commissions Act allows the Government to detain any
non-citizen designated as an enemy combatant, even someone arrested and
held in the United States, without giving that person any ability to
challenge his detention in court.
This is wrong. It is unconstitutional. It is un-American.
Top conservative thinkers like David Keene, head of the American
Conservative Union, who is here today, agree that this change betrays
centuries of legal tradition and practice.
Perhaps most powerful for me at last month’s Senate hearing was the
testimony of Rear Admiral Donald Guter, who was working in his office in
the Pentagon on September 11, 2001, and saw first hand the effects of
terrorism. Admiral Guter declared, "As we limit the rights of human
beings, even those of the enemy, we become more like the enemy. That
makes us weaker and imperils our valiant troops, serving not just in
Iraq and Afghanistan, but around the globe.”
He was right. Whether you’re a soldier,
or a great and good nation like ours, it’s hard to defend the higher
ground by taking the lower road. The world knows what our enemies stand
for. The world also knows what this great and good country has tried to
stand for and live up to – in the best of times, and the worst of times.
I hope all of you will join me in a
grassroots crusade to restore habeas rights. The elimination of basic
legal rights undermines, not strengthens, our ability to achieve
justice. It is from strength that America should defend our values and
our way of life. It is from the strength of our freedoms, our
Constitution, and the rule of law that we shall prevail.
Thank you for coming out today.
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