Georgetown University Professor Anthony Arend has been my go to guy on international law since we were in 7th grade together at MacArthur Junior High (well, that's a slight exaggeration, but not by much). He's got two posts on the Supreme Court's Gitmo decision in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld:
Money quote from the former post:
First, it is clear that the Court wanted to reach the merits and send a strong message to the Executive Branch. The Court could have ducked the case a number of ways. It could have ruled that the Detainee Treatment Act had stripped jurisdiction from the Court. It could have also ruled that the Court should have abstained until the military commission had tried Hamdan. But the Court chose to do neither.
Second, the Court rightly rejected the kangaroo-court-like procedures established by the Commission Order. To have criminal proceedings where the defendant could potentially be denied the right to be present at the trial or prevented from having access to evidence seems contrary to the concept of rule by law. While the Court did not rule out the possibility that those rules could be adopted, it made it clear that there would have to be a significant showing of necessity by the Executive Branch.
Third, the Court vindicated the importance of the international law of armed conflict as reflected in the Geneva Conventions, and it established that Common Article 3 applies to the conflict with al Qaeda. This is extraordinarily important. As noted above, the Administration had been arguing that since al Qaeda was not a state, the provisions of the Geneva Conventions did not apply in our relations with members of that group. Common Article 3, the Administration argued, only applied to true "internal conflicts." Under the Administration's view, there was essentially a lacuna in the law of war-- and that was where our war with al Qaeda fell. The Court rejected this notion. Because the the US is a state party to the Conventions and the fighting took place in another party state party to the Conventions, persons captured in that party are entitled to the protections of Common Article 3. For Hamdan, this meant he had to be tried in a "regularly consituted court."
But go read both for full details.
