The military attorneys for several detainees held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, brought their arguments from the Supreme Court to Georgetown University on Tuesday.

The panel, sponsored by the Institute for International Law and Politics, addressed students in Copley Formal Lounge regarding the Guantanamo detainees and the role U.S. courts should play in their prosecution.

Four lawyers from the Judge Advocate General Corps who will represent prisoners from Afghanistan received special permission from the Department of Defense to take part in a discussion about a legal brief they filed with the Supreme Court recently.

In the brief, the JAG officers requested a civilian review of any judgments handed down by the military commissions President Bush recently established to try the detainees.

“We were afraid there would be no voice for those who might be taken to the military commissions,” Lt. Col. Sharon Shafer said. “We were afraid the Supreme Court would rule with a broad brush, not allowing any of the detainees recourse to civilian courts.”

Some of the detainees, captured during military action in the war on terror, have been held at the U.S. Naval Base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba for more than two years, without trial.

Bush recently established a military commission and a set of rules by which these wartime detainees would be tried, though he has not yet set a date for the commission to begin hearing cases.

The government argues that the detainees do not have the civil rights afforded by the U.S. Constitution because they are not U.S. citizens. It also claims that because they are not in U.S. territory – Guantanamo Bay is leased from Cuba by the U.S. Navy – they have no rights to civilian courts of law. The JAG attorneys contend in their amicus curiae brief that any detainee brought before the military commission should also have the right to have the legality of his detention reviewed by the federal courts.

The JAG lawyers claimed a small victory when the Supreme Court agreed to hear a case that challenges the government’s claim that the detainees cannot have their detention reviewed by civilian courts.

“If there is no civilian review, the system of military justice can conceivably be taken over by the executive branch to be used as that branch sees fit,” Lt. Cmdr. Charles Swift said. He called Bush’s commission an “almost too clever attempt to seize all power for themselves” without a full understanding of the history of military commissions.

Swift contrasted Bush’s actions with those taken by President Harry Truman when seizing control of the steel industry in 1952. According to Swift, Truman wrote a letter to Congress the next day justifying his use of immediate action. Bush has offered no such justification to the legislature.

Swift said that Bush claimed the need for immediate action in detaining the prisoners, yet two years later no tribunal has been convened to hear the cases.

Neal Katyal, a professor at Georgetown University Law Center and Counsel of Record for the JAG officers’ brief, joined the panel in criticizing Bush’s inaction on the matter.

“Your government is creating a legal black hole in Guantanamo, in which they can torture, maim and kill these individuals and there will be no review process,” he said.

Katyal added that Bush’s order calling for military commissions to hear these cases is troubling for two reasons. First, he said, it gives different forms of justice to aliens and U.S. citizens . He also said he saw it as setting a bad precedent for foreign treatment of U.S. nationals abroad.

No dates have been set yet for either the military tribunals or the Supreme Court oral arguments.