IT is worth taking a look at the US Supreme Court decision allowing “war on terror” prisoners held at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba to challenge their detention in the US federal court system. It essentially guarantees those held at Guantanamo the right to habeaus corpus, which is an arrested person's right to know why they have been detained. It prevents the US government from arbitrarily arresting anyone, particularly political opponents, unless they can show that there is a reasonable belief the person has actually violated a law. From the point of view of Saudi Arabia, it is particularly instructive, not from the standpoint of the right to challenge an arrest as all convicted criminals in the Kingdom are allowed to have their convictions and sentences reviewed by a higher court. But from the standpoint of the intricacies unleashed by a civil court system. Seven Supreme Court justices heard and voted on the case. Five of them voted in favor of allowing the prisoners to present their cases in federal court. Four did not. The author of the opinion favoring granting habeas corpus said that it applied only to those detained at Guantanamo. One justice who voted in the minority, however, railed that this case would govern all other situations in which the US detains people outside the US, i.e. in legitimate prisoner of war situations. It really does not matter which justice one agrees or disagrees with. What is instructive here is the attention to precedent that both sides have given. In civil law, the law is interpreted in specific ways and those translations are usually respected by, often, generations of judges to follow. Changes to those precedents are usually based on significant change in social mores or in lifestyles or technology that renders previous interpretations ineffective. A civil society recognizes the inevitable change which its society undergoes. That is one of the bases of civil society that cannot be ignored. __
