Viet Dinh Addresses National Security Symposium at Regent University

Georgetown professor Viet Dinh delivered a scathing review of the Supreme Court's truculent recent jurisprudence regarding rights of enemy combatants detained by U.S. military forces outside the U.S., whether in Iraq or Guantanamo.

Dinh said the Court's recent decisions have gone beyond judicial supremacy, beyond even judicial triumphalism, to something worse - judicial exclusivism, in which the legislative and executive roles have been reduced to the decision whether or not to suspend the right of habeas corpus.

Dinh notes that the current state of the law, which Chief Justice Roberts has described as "Constitutional bait-and-switch," grants more rights to enemy combatants than to Haitian refugee applicants and, indeed, to U.S. military personnel.

He says it is a result of Constitutional brinksmanship in which a majority of the Court has shown disdain for the Constitutional roles of Congress and the Executive roles in the War on Terror.