Mike Levin: “today the Supreme Court ruled in the case of Hamdan v. Rumsfeld that Congress did not intend to strip Federal courts of…”

“today the Supreme Court ruled in the case of Hamdan v. Rumsfeld that Congress did not intend to strip Federal courts of jurisdiction over pending habeas corpus cases when it passed the Detainee Treatment Act of 2005. The Court got it right. The original amendment offered by Senator Graham on the Senate floor, and which passed the Senate by a vote of 49 to 42, contained language that would have stripped the Federal courts of habeas corpus jurisdiction in both pending and future cases brought by detainees at Guantanamo. The amendment specifically stated that the jurisdiction- stripping provision ``shall apply to any application or other action that is pending on or after the date of the enactment of this Act.'' However, this language was removed from the provision by the subsequently adopted Graham-Levin amendment. The Graham-Levin amendment passed the Senate by a vote of 84 to 14, and replaced the earlier Graham amendment in the bill. The legislative history makes clear that the jurisdiction-stripping provisions did not apply to pending habeas corpus cases. The day before the Senate adopted the Graham-Levin modification, I said on the Senate floor: ``The amendment will not strip the courts of jurisdiction over [pending] cases.…”