I was surprised at this verdict, and it is encouraging, however it must be noted that the case had a long path to get to the Supremes, and several lower courts had given differing opinions. I'd be curious how many of the judges for those lower courts are "New Appointments" by this Administration and Congress.

This case, in fact, moved incredibly rapidly to the Supreme Court when compared to most others, which adds to the "startle effect" of the decision.

A concern, or perhaps just more of a question, is that this decision made reference to, and appeared to affirm, the President's authority to "write the rules" for Military trials "as long as they're applied consistently." In effect it appears that the Court said, or at least implied, the treatment of prisoners at Guantanamo would be ok if we treated our own soldiers the same way.

The decision appears to hinge at least in part on defects in the way the rules were written, rather than, in those parts, with the intent and effect of the rules.

With this as a precedent, and with this administration, that scares me.

In theory, the Legislature writes laws about how the military sytem of justice is to work, but as "Commander in Chief" the President writes the detailed rules within the limits of the laws enacted by the Legislature. The working rules are embodied in what's called the "Uniform Code of Military Justice" (UCMJ) and are published primarily in what's called the "Manual for Courts Martial" (MCM).

Recent "amendments" to the MCM have departed from the previous practice of showing the existing paragraph and a replacement paragraph. With the current administration, all one finds is a 600+ page book (the MCM) and 800 pages of:

"paragraph 368.713(a)(b1)[11.63492] and following 17 paragraphs are replaced by 'if the President is having a good day'."

I can't read it, and so far as my searches have shown, neither can anyone else who lacks a staff to make the insertions and strikeouts to see what is actually said, in context. The Supreme Court implies that they have enough clerks to have made the collations, but the public has little or no access to it in any intelligible form. Based on my rather dated experience with prior versions of the UCMJ and MCM, I would have to believe that the obfuscation is deliberate.

In other recent cases (within the last week):

1. The Court trashed a century of precedent to rule that the Kansas Death Penalty law can require the court instructions to the jury to say "if the evidence for and against the death penalty is equal the jury must find for the death penalty."

"Preponderance of evidence" equals "flip a coin?"

2. The Republican Legislature in Texas (and by implication any party with a temporary majority anywhere) is free to rearrange voting districts to favor their own party - at any time.

I haven't read the last one yet, since the decision is only a couple of days old, but many years of hard battles to minimize the effects of Gerrymanders appear to have been put into a bucket and pissed upon. (A tentative conclusion, possibly subject to change.)

John