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 Post subject: Re: The Supreme Court Decision Discussion Thread
PostPosted: Tue May 20, 2008 4:40 am 
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PJ10alive41 wrote:
I don't give a fuck about the actual facts in Wyeth v. Levine. My issue is that this case has the potential to be the biggest tort reform bullshit we have seen in quite some time. The companies conduct their own research and the FDA approves the labeling. Take Ortho-Evra for example...Johnson and Johnson release the drug after conducting 3 tests. However, they only publish 2 tests to the FDA because that's all they require. Since the tests were conflicting (one test showed that the birth control patch was just as safe as the pill and the other test showed it posed a 2 fold increase in blood clots), the drug was advertised as a safe alternative to the pill. However, now we have 16-25 year old girls with PE's, strokes, heart attacks and DVTs. In turn, J&J gets flooded with a wave of lawsuits...so what do they do? They release the 3rd test that confirms the patch doubles the propensity of blood clots. The bastards knew about the 3 tests from the start, but they only released the 2. So now after the lawsuits, the FDA revises the labeling to warn of the increased risk.

Who fucked up here? The FDA? No, J&J fucked up by concealing the fact that they KNEW the 3rd test existed.

If the Supremes rule in favor of preemption there will be no more lawsuits. There will be no more accountability. There will be no incentive to revise labeling. There will only be billion dollar corporations filling their pockets while the average consumer suffers from the consequences of their negligence.

Fuck Republicans.

With all due respect, you are completely wrong in your assessment. The capability for preemption has nothing to do with whether a company has misrepresented their product to the FDA. Should that be the case, then the plaintiffs certainly have a right to sue should they have been harmed by the manufacturer's product. And even if a company has not misrepresented their product, if trials have not uncovered a potential risk as a result of approved use, then the injured parties certainly have a right to sue the manufacturer should they be harmed by an unknown side-effect. This has been the case with Vioxx, Rotarix, Halcion and a host of other drugs. The Bush Administration has placed the same sorts of politically motivated pressure on the FDA that they have placed on every agency in government, but more often to keep drugs from coming to market, RU-486, for instance. The FDA has made mistakes, but it is, in no way, a rubber stamp. Anyone working in Big Pharma would tell you that.

Also, the case of Ortho Evra is not as you have characterized it. The three studies in question were meta-analyses with different constraints in each case. Although all three should have been presented to the FDA, the study in question does not in any way indicate that patients using Ortho Evra have a "propensity" toward blood clots, or venous thromboembolism (VTE). Simply that there is a possible higher risk. Keep in mind that the original birth control pill delivered comparable doses of estrogen to users, and there is always a risk of blood clots, stroke, etc. when using hormone-based birth control methods.

The studies were conducted using data from electronic health care claims. However, the studies were not conducted in exactly the same way, and results of the studies are different.

The first study was conducted by the Boston Collaborative Drug Surveillance Program (BCDSP). This study found that the risk of non-fatal VTE events associated with the use of the Ortho Evra contraceptive patch is similar to the risk associated with the use of oral contraceptive pills (OCs) containing 35 micrograms of ethinyl estradiol and the progestin norgestimate. Analysis of 17 months of data on new cases not included in the original report showed a similar finding.

The second study, which included review of patients’ charts, was conducted by another group of investigators (i3 Ingenix). Results of this study showed an approximately two-fold increase in the risk of medically-verified VTE events in users of Ortho Evra compared to users of OCs containing 35 micrograms of estrogen and the progestin norgestimate.

The third study, also conducted by BCDSP, compared the risk of non-fatal VTE events among users of Ortho Evra to the risk among users of OCs containing 30 micrograms of ethinyl estradiol and the progestin levonorgestrel. The results showed an approximately two-fold increase in the risk of VTE among the Ortho Evra users.


http://www.fda.gov/cder/drug/infopage/o ... qa2008.htm


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 Post subject: Re: The Supreme Court Decision Discussion Thread
PostPosted: Tue May 20, 2008 4:51 am 
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PJ10alive41 wrote:
Green Habit wrote:
drug makers have a very serious incentive to not harm their customers, because the public relations, lawsuits, prosecutions, etc. would be absolutely devastating otherwise.


Again...the reason I mentioned this case...there is a very real possibility that these consequences will no longer be incentives. FDA approval could mean that the drug companies are immune to litigation.

No, there isn't. Not if the drugs have effects that have not been uncovered in the course of trials or if information was withheld from the FDA. What FDA approval allows one to do is a possible risk-benefit analysis for any given drug. If, as you advocate, the trial system were dismantled and drugs were put on the market with out warnings for known side-effects, then if a drug adversely affected a given individual, he would be free to sue the manufacturer. So that means that everyone who has an allergic reaction to the most recent new age cephalosporin should be allowed to sue because there was no prior available knowledge. What we have now is the ability to examine the possible benefits and weigh them against known risks. If a given individual requires a drug that could potentially save his life, but instead he dies because of possible known risks then, of course he does not have the potential to sue the manufacturer. It was a risk that was known and accepted.

One other issue that is just as important is efficacy. If there is no approving body, how do we know that the drugs that are put on the market do anything at all even if they don't harm anyone? Trial and error?


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 Post subject: Re: The Supreme Court Decision Discussion Thread
PostPosted: Tue May 20, 2008 4:53 am 
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SLH916 wrote:
PJ10alive41 wrote:
I don't give a fuck about the actual facts in Wyeth v. Levine. My issue is that this case has the potential to be the biggest tort reform bullshit we have seen in quite some time. The companies conduct their own research and the FDA approves the labeling. Take Ortho-Evra for example...Johnson and Johnson release the drug after conducting 3 tests. However, they only publish 2 tests to the FDA because that's all they require. Since the tests were conflicting (one test showed that the birth control patch was just as safe as the pill and the other test showed it posed a 2 fold increase in blood clots), the drug was advertised as a safe alternative to the pill. However, now we have 16-25 year old girls with PE's, strokes, heart attacks and DVTs. In turn, J&J gets flooded with a wave of lawsuits...so what do they do? They release the 3rd test that confirms the patch doubles the propensity of blood clots. The bastards knew about the 3 tests from the start, but they only released the 2. So now after the lawsuits, the FDA revises the labeling to warn of the increased risk.

Who fucked up here? The FDA? No, J&J fucked up by concealing the fact that they KNEW the 3rd test existed.

If the Supremes rule in favor of preemption there will be no more lawsuits. There will be no more accountability. There will be no incentive to revise labeling. There will only be billion dollar corporations filling their pockets while the average consumer suffers from the consequences of their negligence.

Fuck Republicans.

With all due respect, you are completely wrong in your assessment. The capability for preemption has nothing to do with whether a company has misrepresented their product to the FDA. Should that be the case, then the plaintiffs certainly have a right to sue should they have been harmed by the manufacturer's product. And even if a company has not misrepresented their product, if trials have not uncovered a potential risk as a result of approved use, then the injured parties certainly have a right to sue the manufacturer should they be harmed by an unknown side-effect. This has been the case with Vioxx, Rotarix, Halcion and a host of other drugs. The Bush Administration has placed the same sorts of politically motivated pressure on the FDA that they have placed on every agency in government, but more often to keep drugs from coming to market, RU-486, for instance. The FDA has made mistakes, but it is, in no way, a rubber stamp. Anyone working in Big Pharma would tell you that.

Also, the case of Ortho Evra is not as you have characterized it. The three studies in question were meta-analyses with different constraints in each case. Although all three should have been presented to the FDA, the study in question does not in any way indicate that patients using Ortho Evra have a "propensity" toward blood clots, or venous thromboembolism (VTE). Simply that there is a possible higher risk. Keep in mind that the original birth control pill delivered comparable doses of estrogen to users, and there is always a risk of blood clots, stroke, etc. when using hormone-based birth control methods.

The studies were conducted using data from electronic health care claims. However, the studies were not conducted in exactly the same way, and results of the studies are different.

The first study was conducted by the Boston Collaborative Drug Surveillance Program (BCDSP). This study found that the risk of non-fatal VTE events associated with the use of the Ortho Evra contraceptive patch is similar to the risk associated with the use of oral contraceptive pills (OCs) containing 35 micrograms of ethinyl estradiol and the progestin norgestimate. Analysis of 17 months of data on new cases not included in the original report showed a similar finding.

The second study, which included review of patients’ charts, was conducted by another group of investigators (i3 Ingenix). Results of this study showed an approximately two-fold increase in the risk of medically-verified VTE events in users of Ortho Evra compared to users of OCs containing 35 micrograms of estrogen and the progestin norgestimate.

The third study, also conducted by BCDSP, compared the risk of non-fatal VTE events among users of Ortho Evra to the risk among users of OCs containing 30 micrograms of ethinyl estradiol and the progestin levonorgestrel. The results showed an approximately two-fold increase in the risk of VTE among the Ortho Evra users.


http://www.fda.gov/cder/drug/infopage/o ... qa2008.htm


With all due respect, I know a shit ton more about this than you do. Preemption is an enormous issue.

Do you know what preemption means in this context? If the court rules that FDA approval preempts claims based on state law then drug companies can pretty much do whatever the hell they want. Do you know anything about standard of proof? If this preemption bullshit goes through then the standard of proof needed to prevail against these bastards is going to be willful and wanton. Are you familiar with how fucking difficult that is to establish? Near impossible in this type of situtation.

And on a side note, Ortho shoots 30% more estrogen into the blood stream than the traditional pill. The labeling has been revised twice. Once in 2006 and again in 2008 to include the 3rd study. It's a travesty this shit is still on the market.

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 Post subject: Re: The Supreme Court Decision Discussion Thread
PostPosted: Tue May 20, 2008 4:59 am 
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SLH916 wrote:
PJ10alive41 wrote:
Green Habit wrote:
drug makers have a very serious incentive to not harm their customers, because the public relations, lawsuits, prosecutions, etc. would be absolutely devastating otherwise.


Again...the reason I mentioned this case...there is a very real possibility that these consequences will no longer be incentives. FDA approval could mean that the drug companies are immune to litigation.

No, there isn't. Not if the drugs have effects that have not been uncovered in the course of trials or if information was withheld from the FDA. What FDA approval allows one to do is a possible risk-benefit analysis for any given drug. If, as you advocate, the trial system were dismantled and drugs were put on the market with out warnings for known side-effects, then if a drug adversely affected a given individual, he would be free to sue the manufacturer. So that means that everyone who has an allergic reaction to the most recent new age cephalosporin should be allowed to sue because there was no prior available knowledge. What we have now is the ability to examine the possible benefits and weigh them against known risks. If a given individual requires a drug that could potentially save his life, but instead he dies because of possible known risks then, of course he does not have the potential to sue the manufacturer. It was a risk that was known and accepted.

One other issue that is just as important is efficacy. If there is no approving body, how do we know that the drugs that are put on the market do anything at all even if they don't harm anyone? Trial and error?


You really have no idea what you are talking about so I'm assuming you're a republican. See my previous post and read up on preemption. No one knows what the ultimate outcome will be, but like I said before...it scares me.

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 Post subject: Re: The Supreme Court Decision Discussion Thread
PostPosted: Tue May 20, 2008 5:17 am 
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PJ10alive41 wrote:
With all due respect, I know a shit ton more about this than you do. Preemption is an enormous issue.

Do you know what preemption means in this context? If the court rules that FDA approval preempts claims based on state law then drug companies can pretty much do whatever the hell they want. Do you know anything about standard of proof? If this preemption bullshit goes through then the standard of proof needed to prevail against these bastards is going to be willful and wanton. Are you familiar with how fucking difficult that is to establish? Near impossible in this type of situtation.

And on a side note, Ortho shoots 30% more estrogen into the blood stream than the traditional pill. The labeling has been revised twice. Once in 2006 and again in 2008 to include the 3rd study. It's a travesty this shit is still on the market.

Actually it's 60%, and the original formulation from the 1960's had 100% higher dose. And I do believe that you know much more about this than I do. But it is not the case that drug companies "can pretty much do whatever they want." The risk of VTE is well-known in all hormone based birth control methods. Ten million women have used Ortho Evra. Is the amount of paralyzing stroke higher with Ortho Evra use than it is with other hormone-based birth control methods?


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 Post subject: Re: The Supreme Court Decision Discussion Thread
PostPosted: Tue May 20, 2008 5:33 am 
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Vioxx - is the consensus that it is an overall good drug, just that it more hazardous than initially thought?


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 Post subject: Re: The Supreme Court Decision Discussion Thread
PostPosted: Tue May 20, 2008 5:53 am 
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simple schoolboy wrote:
Vioxx - is the consensus that it is an overall good drug, just that it more hazardous than initially thought?

Vioxx is one case in which information was actually withheld. It does cause a higher incidence of heart attack and stroke than a placebo control. Merck did everything in its power to squelch this information. Vioxx is a non-steroidal anti-inflammatory just like ibuprofen or tylenol, but it works by a different mechanism. It may not have the gastric side-effects and that was its selling point. It turns out that it is also a more effective pain-reliever for some individuals than ibuprofen or tylenol. Because of the cardiac side-effects, it should have been used only as a last resort in those who had failed other drugs. Keep in mind that despite what I believe is a two-fold increase in heart attack, it is still an increase of about 1% to about 3% in the study population. Since there are other COX-2 inhibitors on the market, there is no need to bring Vioxx back, but it remains an ongoing test case for the elucidation of primary data. All of the major pharmaceutical companies now release all primary data from drug studies because of this case.


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 Post subject: Re: The Supreme Court Decision Discussion Thread
PostPosted: Tue May 20, 2008 1:22 pm 
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Green Habit wrote:
John Stossel wrote:
Without an FDA, how would doctors and patients know which drugs were safe and effective?

The same way we know which computers and restaurants are good -- through newspapers, magazines and word of mouth. In a free, open society, competition gets the information out, and that protects consumers better than government command and control.


With computers and restaurants, early adopters get a crappy machine or a bad meal. With drugs, they end up [more] sick or dead.

I don't think medicine needs to be without risk, but I think it needs a minimum bar.

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 Post subject: Re: The Supreme Court Decision Discussion Thread
PostPosted: Tue May 20, 2008 1:47 pm 
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SLH916 wrote:
Do you think that any individual drug company could replace the function of the FDA for oversight? What you are advocating would be a by-passing of the trials network and sending drugs out to be tested in situ. There is no way for any drug company to know whether a drug is potentially harmful without Phase I trials. Who would coordinate this?

I don't have a crystal ball to say who or what would be the best method, but I don't wish to declare by default that the federal government is the only entity capable of doing it.


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 Post subject: Re: The Supreme Court Decision Discussion Thread
PostPosted: Tue May 20, 2008 1:49 pm 
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PJ10alive41 wrote:
Green Habit wrote:
drug makers have a very serious incentive to not harm their customers, because the public relations, lawsuits, prosecutions, etc. would be absolutely devastating otherwise.

Again...the reason I mentioned this case...there is a very real possibility that these consequences will no longer be incentives. FDA approval could mean that the drug companies are immune to litigation.

Right, and I would agree with you in this case. If it's clear that a drug company misled both its consumers and the FDA, I don't see why the former can't argue for redress when the latter blew it.


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 Post subject: Re: The Supreme Court Decision Discussion Thread
PostPosted: Tue May 20, 2008 2:54 pm 
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Green Habit wrote:
SLH916 wrote:
Do you think that any individual drug company could replace the function of the FDA for oversight? What you are advocating would be a by-passing of the trials network and sending drugs out to be tested in situ. There is no way for any drug company to know whether a drug is potentially harmful without Phase I trials. Who would coordinate this?

I don't have a crystal ball to say who or what would be the best method, but I don't wish to declare by default that the federal government is the only entity capable of doing it.

Green Habit, are there any regulatory agencies that you approve of?


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 Post subject: Re: The Supreme Court Decision Discussion Thread
PostPosted: Tue May 20, 2008 3:36 pm 
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SLH916 wrote:
Green Habit wrote:
SLH916 wrote:
Do you think that any individual drug company could replace the function of the FDA for oversight? What you are advocating would be a by-passing of the trials network and sending drugs out to be tested in situ. There is no way for any drug company to know whether a drug is potentially harmful without Phase I trials. Who would coordinate this?

I don't have a crystal ball to say who or what would be the best method, but I don't wish to declare by default that the federal government is the only entity capable of doing it.

Green Habit, are there any regulatory agencies that you approve of?

Before I give some examples, let me first say that I don't disapprove of the notion that products need to be tested, and that scrutiny should increase with the potential hazards it can cause. I could even be persuaded to compromise that in certain cases, a gov't could have a legitimate interest in mandating that a product meets a level of standard (such as medicine).

My big question, however, is does the gov't have to run the programs to assure that standard? Your argument is that no one other than the FDA can do it in the field of medicine. You could very well be right. However, it's not like they've had any competition, and perhaps there are ways that non-gov't organizations can improve on processes.

Anyway, I don't have a problem with many if not most of the regulations the EPA imposes, as pollution that is capable of entering the space of others (both private and public) must be contained. Reasonable zoning ordinances can also play in environmental protection (I think they don't go far enough), as well as quality of life issues. If a private company wants to earn a gov't contract, I don't see why the gov't can't demand that certain standards in performance be met in exchange for earning the contract.


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 Post subject: Re: The Supreme Court Decision Discussion Thread
PostPosted: Tue Jun 03, 2008 6:20 am 
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Court rules for defendants on money laundering

[url]news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080602/ap_on_go_su_co/scotus_money_laundering;_ylt=AmTW47Pq1c1MhPRDfATP84WyFz4D[/url]
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WASHINGTON - The Supreme Court ruled Monday that federal prosecutors have gone too far in their use of money laundering charges to combat drug traffickers and organized crime.

ADVERTISEMENT

In two decisions — one a 5-4 split, the other unanimous — the justices found that money laundering charges apply only to profits of an illegal gambling ring and cannot be used when the only evidence of a possible crime is when someone hides large amounts of cash in his car when heading for the border.

The government brings money laundering cases against more than 1,300 people annually and the justices appeared to agree with defense lawyers who said government prosecutors have been stretching the bounds of the law. The Justice Department drew little sympathy from Justice Antonin Scalia.

"The government exaggerates the difficulties" of enforcing a narrowed interpretation of money laundering, Scalia wrote in the gambling case involving an illegal lottery. Scalia drew the support of three other justices. The deciding fifth vote came in a separate opinion from a member of the liberal wing of the court, Justice John Paul Stevens. Stevens declined to go as far as Scalia did in rejecting the government's position.

While deciding in the defendants' favor in both cases, justices took pains to say that they were engaging in carefully calibrated adjustments, not radical change. Defense lawyers had a different perspective.

"The rulings significantly raise the bar for prosecutors to prove money laundering," said Jeffrey Green, who represents the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers.

Green said the decisions also will significantly affect the white-collar world, where money laundering charges are frequently tacked onto alleged violations of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, the law designed to prosecute American companies that bribe foreign officials.

The White House referred questions on the rulings to the Justice Department, which declined to comment.

Congress enacted the anti-money-laundering law in 1986 after the President's Commission on Organized Crime highlighted the growing problem of "washing" criminal proceeds through overseas bank accounts and legitimate businesses.

The law carries 20-year maximum prison terms and heavy fines on conviction.

In the 5-4 ruling siding with defendants Efrain Santos and Benedicto Diaz, a federal judge and the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Chicago said that paying off gambling winners and compensating employees who collect the bets don't qualify as money laundering. Those are expenses, and prosecutors must show that profits were used to promote the illegal activity, the appeals court ruled in a decision affirmed by the Supreme Court.

At oral arguments before the court last October, the Justice Department spelled out the problem of separating profit from gross receipts in a criminal enterprise. "Criminals often don't keep accounting records," the Justice Department solicitor general's office argued.

In the case decided unanimously, Justice Clarence Thomas wrote that a money laundering case against a man headed to Mexico with $81,000 in cash cannot be proven merely by showing that the funds were concealed in a secret compartment of a car.

Instead, the court said that prosecutors must show that the purpose of transporting funds in a money laundering case was to conceal their ownership, source or control.

In passing the money laundering law, Congress intended to fill a gap in law enforcement by preventing the concealment and reinvestment of money derived from criminal activity.

Between $8 billion and $25 billion a year from Mexican and Colombian drugs is moved across the border and laundered, says the Justice Department's National Drug Intelligence Center.

The cases are U.S. v. Santos, 06-1005, and Cuellar v. U.S., 06-1456


Its June, that means the Second Ammendment decision will be released soon. Who's excited?


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 Post subject: Re: The Supreme Court Decision Discussion Thread
PostPosted: Thu Jun 12, 2008 9:37 pm 
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Justices: Gitmo detainees can challenge detention in U.S. courts

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Suspected terrorists and foreign fighters held by the U.S. military at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, have the right to challenge their detention in federal court, the Supreme Court ruled Thursday.

The 5-4 vote reflects the divide over how much legal autonomy the U.S. military should have to prosecute about 270 prisoners, some of whom have been held for more than six years without charges. Fourteen of them are alleged to be top al Qaeda figures.

Writing for the majority, Justice Anthony Kennedy said, "the laws and Constitution are designed to survive, and remain in force, in extraordinary times. Liberty and security can be reconciled; and in our system reconciled within the framework of the law."

Kennedy, the court's swing vote, was supported by Justices John Paul Stevens, David Souter, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen Breyer, generally considered the liberal contingent.

At issue was the rights of detainees to contest their imprisonment and challenge the rules set up to try them. Watch how the 5-4 ruling is a major blow for the Bush administration »

A congressional law passed in 2006 would limit court jurisdiction to hear so-called habeas corpus challenges to detention. It is a legal question the justices have tackled three times since 2004, including Thursday's ruling.

Each time, the justices have ruled against the government's claim that it has the authority to hold people it considers "enemy combatants."

Preliminary hearings have begun in Guantanamo for some of the accused. A military panel this month arraigned five suspected senior al Qaeda detainees, including the alleged mastermind of the September 11 attacks, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who was transferred to the prison camp in 2006.

The Bush administration has urged the high court not to get involved in the broader appeals, saying the federal judiciary has no authority to hear such matters.

Four justices agreed. In a sharp dissent, read in part from the bench, Justice Antonin Scalia said the majority "warps our Constitution."

The "nation will live to regret what the court has done today," Scalia said.

He was supported by Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito.

President Bush, who is traveling in Europe, said he disagreed with the Guantanamo ruling but promised to abide by it.

"Congress and the administration worked very carefully on a piece of legislation that set the appropriate procedures in place as to how to deal with the detainees," he said. "We'll study this opinion, and we'll do so with this in mind to determine whether or not additional legislation might be appropriate so that we can safely say, truly say to the American people, 'we are doing everything we can to protect you.' "

The Pentagon declined to comment, and the Justice Department said it was reviewing the decision and was expected to comment later Thursday.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-California, welcomed the ruling, saying the Supreme Court upheld the Constitution.

"I have long been an advocate of closing Guantanamo, so I would hope this is in furtherance of taking that action," Pelosi said.

The appeals involve noncitizens. Sixteen lawsuits filed on behalf of about 200 prisoners were put on hold pending a ruling last year by a federal appeals court upholding the government's right to detain and prosecute suspected terrorists and war criminals.

An attorney for one of the detainees, Salim Ahmed Hamdan -- Osama bin Laden's alleged driver and bodyguard -- said he would file an appeal asking that charges be dropped against the Yemeni native.

"The clearest immediate impact of this ruling is to remove the remaining barriers for closing Guantanamo Bay. It means, in legal terms, Guantanamo Bay is no different than Kansas," attorney Charles Swift said.

Now the ruling has been issued, a flood of similar appeals can be expected.

The lead plaintiffs are Lakhdar Boumediene, a Bosnian, and Fawzi al-Odah of Kuwait. They question the constitutionality of the Military Commissions Act, passed by Congress in October 2006. The law addresses how suspected foreign terrorists and fighters can be tried and sentenced under U.S. military law.

Under the system, those facing trial would have a limited right to appeal any conviction, reducing the jurisdiction of federal courts.

The suspects also must prove to a three-person panel of military officers they are not a terror risk. But defendants would have access to evidence normally given to a jury, and CIA agents were given more guidance in how far they can go in interrogating prisoners.

The law was a direct response to a June 2006 Supreme Court ruling striking down the Bush administration's plan to try detainees before military commissions.

In 2004, the justices also affirmed the right of prisoners to challenge their detention in federal court. Congress and the administration have sought to restrict such access.

The Justice Department wanted the high court to pass on these appeals, at least until the first wave of tribunals had a chance to work. Administration officials also argued the prisoners have plenty of legal safeguards.

The White House has said it is considering whether to close the Guantanamo prison, suggesting some high-level al Qaeda detainees could be transferred to the federal prison in Leavenworth, Kansas, and to a military brig in North Charleston, South Carolina.

Most of the dozens of pending cases have been handled in the U.S. Court of Appeals in Washington, which in February 2007 upheld the Military Commissions Act's provision stripping courts of jurisdiction to hear "habeas" challenges to the prisoners' confinement.

But a three-judge panel of the same circuit expressed concern about why the U.S. military continues to limit attorney access to the Guantanamo men.

The detainees' legal team alleges the government is unfairly restricting access to potentially exculpatory evidence, including documents they may not know exist before pretrial hearings.

Legal and terrorism analysts said the issues presented in these latest sets of appeals are unlike those the justices have delved into previously.

"The difference in this case is that they have a congressional enactment cutting back on habeas corpus that they have to wrestle with," said Edward Lazarus, a leading appellate attorney and author of a book on the high court, "Closed Chambers: The Rise, Fall, and Future of the Modern Supreme Court."

"And that, from a constitutional point of view, is really a different question."


In a separate decision, the court refused to intervene in the case of two American citizens convicted in Iraqi courts but held by the U.S. military.

The high court rejected lawyers' arguments that Mohammad Munaf and Shawqi Ahmad Omar should be released, saying that U.S. courts are not allowed to intervene in foreign courts.


http://www.cnn.com/2008/US/06/12/scotus/index.html

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 Post subject: Re: The Supreme Court Decision Discussion Thread
PostPosted: Thu Jun 12, 2008 10:44 pm 
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Is it not an option to declare these folks legitimate combatants and hold them as POWs until their faction ceases hostilities?


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 Post subject: Re: The Supreme Court Decision Discussion Thread
PostPosted: Fri Jun 13, 2008 12:34 am 
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simple schoolboy wrote:
Is it not an option to declare these folks legitimate combatants and hold them as POWs until their faction ceases hostilities?

That would have opened them up to all the protections afforded under the Geneva Conventions. That's why Bush went down the "enemy combatant" line to try to bypass this, arguing that they weren't fighting for any country and thus not under uniform.


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 Post subject: Re: The Supreme Court Decision Discussion Thread
PostPosted: Fri Jun 13, 2008 1:37 pm 
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It's sad that we had to have the Supreme Court tell us that civil rights are human rights, not US citizen rights.

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 Post subject: Re: The Supreme Court Decision Discussion Thread
PostPosted: Fri Jun 13, 2008 2:08 pm 
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B wrote:
It's sad that we had to have the Supreme Court tell us that civil rights are human rights, not US citizen rights.

Stop warping our Constitution!

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 Post subject: Re: The Supreme Court Decision Discussion Thread
PostPosted: Fri Jun 13, 2008 2:09 pm 
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well, this sucks. i can't believe they're giving terrorists rights. they're flipping terrorists!

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 Post subject: Re: The Supreme Court Decision Discussion Thread
PostPosted: Fri Jun 13, 2008 2:28 pm 
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bart d. wrote:
B wrote:
It's sad that we had to have the Supreme Court tell us that civil rights are human rights, not US citizen rights.

Stop warping our Constitution!


Before we wrote that, we said this:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

I still believe it.

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