Supreme Court Starts Making (Some) Sense
One piece of good news from our Supreme Court, which has been one of the obstacles over the last five years to a a more effective counter-terrorism policy. Today, in Holder v. Humanitarian Law Project (I love the case name), the Court declared that Congress and the President could make it a federal crime to provide "material support" or resources to a terrorist group -- here the plaintiffs claimed that they wanted to provide money, "legal training, and political advocacy" to Kurdish and Sri Lankan terrorist groups. The plaintiffs, of course, claimed that all of this was protected by the First Amendment -- under their theory, I suppose, Hitler could have set up a pro-Nazi lobbying group in the United States, or Saddam Hussein could have run a group out of DC to litigate against the Gulf War. An example of how the courts have run riot -- these kinds of arguments proved convincing in the federal appeals court in San Francisco.
The most important insight that the Court accepted was that terrorist groups do indeed benefit overall, even when people contribute for supposedly peaceful "wings" of the terrorist group that engage in non-violent activities, like running hospitals and schools. Terrorist groups don't segregate their activities as much as they would have us believe, and giving them money in one area simply frees up resources to go to their violent activities. Who knows? Next the Supreme Court may decide that it is OK to shoot missiles at al Qaeda leaders abroad.
To the Obama administration's (and Elena Kagan's) credit, it defended the constitutionality of the statute. I confess not to being a disinterested party -- I helped file an amicus brief in the Court on the side of the government, because I doubted whether they would fully defend the government's power to wage war.
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Jun '10
Re: Supreme Court Starts Making (Some) Sense
Whether you give terror groups a $5000 case of AK-47s, or give them $5000, the donor has to be aware that the end result is the same, or worse. You can't tell a judge, "I didn't give my stumbling drunk friend my car, I just gave him the car keys, and pointed to where it was. I had no idea he would drive it."
Re: Supreme Court Starts Making (Some) Sense
Reaching back to my law school training, John, a fallback position might be something like -- Yes, but what if my money is going to a place where beneficiaries have no reasonable expectation of receiving basic services like medical care aside from services provided by recognized terrorist organizations? Or what if a terrorist organization is so intertwined with a recognized government that it is no longer evident where one begins and the other ends? I'm thinking, of course, of Hezbollah.
Re: Supreme Court Starts Making (Some) Sense
Good question. I've thought that if the U.S. is going to go ahead and designate Hezbollah a terrorist group, it ought to impose the same sanctions on the countries that support it. Allowing an enemy like Iran to win an immunity for itself simply by creating a terrorist group reminds me of the way a corporation might create a shell company to avoid liability for its actions.