Bush Military Court Order

[John Noble]

At 4:15 PM -0500 11/17/01, gerald neuman wrote:
>A question that may seem ignorant, but I am out of the country at present.
>Has anyone analyzed the extent to which the executive order exercises
>powers that Congress refused to grant the executive in the USAPATRIOT act,
>a la Youngstown?
>thanks,

I think it would have been prominent if the Act expressly granted
adjudicative functions to the executive, and I don't recall mention of
that. But presumably there were at least some expansions of federal
investigative authority that were rejected or qualified. Those limitations
would be beside the point before a military tribunal as I understand it. In
fact, unless one thinks that the EO is designed to punish the innocent, or
that an alleged terrorist might get a less biased judgment or less severe
penalty from an American jury, its signal advantage is the avoidance of
constitutional and statutory restrictions on admissibility, along with
foreclosing the discovery rights required to enforce them.

John Noble