John Cornyn: “once the Military Commissions Act, MCA, is signed into law and section 7 is effective, Congress will finally accomplish…”

“once the Military Commissions Act, MCA, is signed into law and section 7 is effective, Congress will finally accomplish what it sought to do through the Detainee Treatment Act-- DTA--last year. It will finally get the lawyers out of Guantanamo Bay. It will substitute the blizzard of litigation instigated by Rasul v. Bush with a narrow DC Circuit -only review of the Combatant Status Review Tribunal--CSRT--hearings. Perhaps even more important than the narrow standards of review created by the DTA is the fact that that review is exclusive to the court of appeals. This is by design. Courts of appeals do not hold evidentiary hearings or otherwise take in evidence outside of the administrative record. The DC Circuit will operate no differently under the CSRT review provisions of the DTA. The circuit court will review the administrative record of the CSRTs to make sure that the right standards were applied, the standards that the military itself set for CSRTs. And it will determine whether the CSRT system as a whole is consistent with the Constitution and with Federal statutes. There is no invitation in the DTA or MCA to reconsider the sufficiency of the evidence. Weighing of the evidence is a function for the military when the question is whether someone is an enemy combatant. Courts simply lack the competence--the knowledge of the battlefield and the nature of our foreign enemies--to judge whether particular facts show that someone is an enemy combatant.”