Saturday, June 28, 2008

Non-US Citizens and Constitutional Rights

Those opposed to the Supreme Court's ruling that the alleged terrorists held at Guantanamo are protected by the Constitution howl that we shouldn't be giving aliens constitutional rights. But this is nothing new:

In Chew v. Colding (1953), the Court ruled that those who have successfully entered the country are protected by First Amendment rights to free speech, Fourth Amendment protections against unreasonable searches and seizures, and Fourteenth Amendment guarantees of equal protection of the law. Outside of the United States, however, these protections do not apply.


The question in the recent was whether Camp X-Ray at Gitmo was part of the US. The Court said it was.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

As I read these stuff they consider Guantanamo and even Ellis Island out of the US land and they say this case is not a precedent for those areas.

DC Palm Central said...

The ruling as I understand says that the US cannot consider Gitmo out of the US, but that it doesn't necessarily apply to other territories which would be decided on a case by case basis.