Salim Hamdan was Osama bin Laden’s driver. Now, he’s joined a long list of rather unlikely and unlikeable people whose names stand for significant Constitutional rights and principles of liberty. Leon Chaplinsky called the local sheriff a “damned racketeer.” Paul Cohen wore a leather jacket that said “Fuck the Draft” to the Los Angeles County Central Courthouse. Clarence Brandenburg was a leader of the Ku Klux Klan. Ernesto Miranda was a kidnapper and a rapist. Clarence Earl Gideon was an inveterate gambler and a thief. Even William Marbury was a small-time political schemer content to be used as a pawn by men greater than himself.
But of course, we don’t have a Constitution for the just, the honorable, the popular, the honest, or the noble elements of our society. We have it for everyone. And we have it to control the government. Thus, the Constitution comes in to play for the reprobates, the liars, the criminals, the sinister, and the disreputable. And government officials.
You can read the lengthy opinion about Hamdan, confirming that the Geneva Conventions are treaty obligations, second only to the Constitution itself in importance, here at the Supreme Court’s website. Generally, I approve of the opinion; I’ve not had time to read all 187 pages of it, nor reflect deeply about it. But it doesn’t mean we have to set Hamdan and his ilk free; it means we have to treat them like prisoners of war. Which is really what they are — plucked off the battlefield, enemies of the country, being held so that they can’t hurt us anymore and so we can extract information from them. We have rules that tell us how to treat people like that, and it’s high time we start following them.
