Without Habeas, Everything is Legal

My column today in the Legal Intelligencer is now online here. Titled Without the Writ of Habeas Corpus, Everything is Legal, the column examines what is at stake right now in the House and Senate, which are currently debating a horrendous bill that would strip the right of habeas corpus and essentially legalize techniques long understood as torture. Here's the lede:

We are on the threshold of a major decision about how America understands the concepts of law and justice. If this country does not want to institutionalize a regime where torture is practiced and potential innocents who are tortured are blocked from complaining in courts, it will have to look to senators and congressmen other than Republican senators John McCain, Lindsey Graham and John Warner.

Unfortunately, since the time I wrote that, the House already voted 253-168 to pass the Bush-McCain torture bill, and I've read that the Senate is expected to pass their version today.

Give the column a read, and then check out the following additional links (and contact your Senators):

Prof. Froomkin's Dear Senator Reid

Prof. Balkin's Spineless Democrats Deserve to Lose

Digby's It Could Happen to You and Faithbased Torture

Hilzoy's We Can All Be Enemy Combatants!

Prof. Lederman's It Gets Worse

Publius' New Birth of Freedom and Bush Wins

Bruce Fein's Lincoln's Example

David Luban's The burning question

Scott Lemieux's Limited to Nothing

Steve Gilliard's About Torture

McJoan's Consensus

Hunter's A Modest Proposal

Kos' There's a Reason this is a "Long-Term Movement"

Matt Stoller's Beating Back this Bill

The Carpetbagger Report's McCain, Warner, and Graham cut and ran and Congress putting its stamp of approval on torture

Billmon's The Hard Core and See No Evil

Christy Hardin Smith's Unappetizing, This Bill Does Violence to the Constitution and Well Here's a Question

Glenn Greenwald's Democrats and the Torture Bill