Does anybody remember civil liberties?

Last weekend I attended an LF conference on punishment and was struck by the fact that at no time during our discussions did we really address the war on terror or Iraq. Perhaps it was the group, which was dominated more by theorists, or the fact that our nation has disturbingly accepted the abuses by the executive branch government in"detaining" all sorts of folks it encounters who don't wear three pieces suits or look suspiciously Semitic.

Therefore the Supreme Court's decisions in three cases last week concerning the legal rights of those detained during the war on terror seem important enough to applaud. I am not a lawyer, and try to avoid straying into legal issues, so I've hesitated about blogging about them. But leave it to Nick Gillespie at Reason Magazine to express my views more thoughtfully and humorously than I can. In sum it looks like the legal blogs on our side are in agreement that the Court got it right last week. If that's even a small roadblock for the big government conservatives in the Justice Department, then I say let's have a drink for the Court.