BLUMENTHAL: The imperial presidency crushed

By Sidney Blumenthal

The Supreme Court's rejection of kangaroo military tribunals shackles Bush's legacy to Nixon's -- and could even land him in the dock for war crimes.The Supreme Court ruling in the case of Hamdan v. Donald Rumsfeld, Secretary of Defense, et al., on June 29 did far more than settle the limited question of whether alleged terrorist detainees can be tried before secret military tribunals. By declaring Bush's position unconstitutional, the court in effect judged his concept of his presidency and his methods in his "global war on terror" illegitimate. In his majority opinion, Justice John Paul Steven's strategic capitalization emphasized the larger point: "The Executive," he wrote, "is bound to comply with the Rule of Law."

Inside the Bush administration, senior legal authorities refer to their novel framing of the law as the "war paradigm." Its origins can be traced to Vice President Dick Cheney's experience with the thwarting of Richard Nixon's imperial presidency and Cheney's subsequent decades-long effort to re-create it on a new basis. >>>cont

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