NewsHour Extra: Supreme Court Hears Guantanamo Case -- April 21, 2004

Using NewsHour Extra Feature Stories

Overview: NewsHour Extra features stories can help students identify and interpret key issues in current events. This activity anticipates one class period, but the follow-up essay might be assigned as homework, or in another period.

Warm Up: Use initiating questions to introduce the topic and find out how much your students know.

Main Activity: Have students read NewsHour Extra's feature story and answer the questions on the reading comprehension handout.

Discussion: Use discussion questions to encourage students to think about how the issues outlined in the story affect their lives and express and debate different opinions.

Follow-up: Students can write an 500-word editorial on the topic expressing their views and send it to NewsHour Extra [extra@newshour.org] for possible publication.

Evaluation: Students are graded on their answers to reading comprehension questions and/or their editorial.

Story: Supreme Court Hears Guantanamo Case, 4/21/04
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/extra/features/jan-june04/guantanamo_4-21.html

Initiating Questions:

1. Can the U.S. imprison suspected criminals without a trial?

2. What about people suspected of plotting terrorist attacks? What about people caught during military action, such as the war in Afghanistan following the Sept. 11 attacks?

3. What can the U.S. do if officials still consider such prisoners threats?

Reading Comprehension Questions: (click here for printout)

1. What was the focus of Tuesday's Supreme Court hearing?

The Supreme Court heard arguments on Tuesday in a case that will determine whether foreign prisoners being held at the U.S. naval base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba can be tried by American courts.

2. Who is the U.S. military holding at Guantanamo Bay? Why?

The U.S. military has been holding about 600 prisoners at Guantanamo since early 2002. In efforts to capture members of the al-Qaida network, believed to be responsible for the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks that killed nearly 3,000 people, the United States battled Afghanistan's Taliban government, catching many of the current prisoners.

3. Have the detainees been charged with a crime?

Since then, the Bush administration has claimed the right to hold the prisoners indefinitely, refusing them access to lawyers and not charging them officially. The Department of Defense cites the need to preserve security during war.

4. What protection should the non-U.S. citizens have under the U.S. Constitution according to their lawyers?

Lawyers for 16 British, Australian and Kuwaiti detainees argued that the U.S. Constitution does not allow the government to create a prison that falls outside the reaches of American courts and that prisoners should have access to those courts to fight for their release.

5. Why does the government say the detainees should not be able to argue their cases in U.S. courts?

The federal government argued the earlier ruling, involving German prisoners in U.S. custody during World War II, should be maintained, or upheld. The government also argued that U.S. courts should not interfere with the military and its trial procedures.

6. What is the debate over who controls the Guantanamo Bay naval base?

Under the lease the two governments signed, the Bush administration argued, Cuba holds ultimate control over the property. Lawyers for the detainees say the naval base, which houses a detention camp for prisoners captured in foreign wars, is U.S. territory and therefore prisoners should be protected by U.S. laws.
"Cuban law doesn't apply there. Cuban law has never had any application inside that base. A stamp with Fidel Castro's picture on it wouldn't get a letter off the base," said John Gibbons, the attorney representing the detainees.

7. What did Justice Stephen Breyer say about the government's activities at Guantanamo Bay?

Some members of the court seemed to agree with Gibbons' argument, including Justice Stephen Breyer, who raised the notion of checks and balances, the U.S. form of government that allows for each of the three branches of government to rein in the other.
"It seems rather contrary to an idea of a Constitution with three branches that the executive would be free to do whatever they want, whatever they want without a check," Breyer said.

8. Does Justice Antonin Scalia agree with Justice Breyer?

But Justice Antonin Scalia questioned whether the court was in a position to create such a check on the government or the military.

"We have only lawyers before us, we have no witnesses, we have no cross-examination, we have no investigative staff," he said. "And we should be the ones, Justice Breyer suggests, to draw up this reticulated system to preserve our military from intervention by the courts?"

9. What case will the Supreme Court hear on April 28?

On April 28, the court will review the cases of two U.S. citizens being held indefinitely as "enemy combatants" -- Yaser Hamdi, an American caught fighting with the Taliban in Afghanistan, and Chicago native Jose Padilla, who changed his name to Abdullah al-Muhajir. The FBI arrested Padilla after it reportedly uncovered a plot to explode a so-called "dirty bomb" -- a bomb that can be used to spread radioactive material.
Neither Hamdi nor Padilla has been charged with a crime. Their lawyers are asking that they be released or officially charged and given the opportunity to argue their cases in court, a right afforded to all Americans under the Constitution.

Discussion Activity (more research might be needed):

1. What is the system of "checks and balances" in the American form of government? Explain how it works and how it could affect the cases the Supreme Court is now hearing?

2. If the government loses the three cases being heard by the court, limits could be set on how much power it has in prosecuting criminals in the war on terrorism? Is this a good thing or not? Should the Department of Defense be allowed to deal with detainees in whatever manner it sees fit? Explain your answer.

3. Some people have accused the government of compromising civil liberties in order to preserve national security. The Patriot Act is one way they say the government does this. Do you agree or disagree? Research the Patriot Act to determine your opinion of its merits and limitations.

4. Pretend you are the president of the United States. You have a suspected terrorist in custody, who may have information leading to the capture of a ring of terrorists believed to be responsible for a recent bombing. Do you, a) hold him indefinitely until you get the information you think he has, or b) give him access to a court trial where he may go free without providing any information? Explain your rationale.

Write a 300-500 word essay on any of these topics providing clear examples. Send your completed editorial to NewsHour Extra (extra@newshour.org). Exceptional essays might be published on our Web site.