The Supreme Court on Thursday ruled in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld that the military tribunals held at the Guantanamo Bay military base in Cuba were not legal, and that the Bush administration was overstepping its legal boundaries in allowing them. In a 5-3 ruling, Justice Stevens wrote the majority opinion with Justices Breyer, Ginsburg, and Souter, and ultimately decided that the tribunals violated military justice law, the Geneva convention and 2005′s Detainee Treatment Act.

This is certainly not a ruling that will lead to the shutting down of Guantanamo Bay — not in the short term, anyway. The Court did not object to the holding of prisoners at Guantanamo “for the duration of active hostilities” — a delightfully vague term, particularly when dealing with the apparently endless “War on Terror”. The Court even went so far as to state that they have “assumed, as we must, that the allegations made in the Government’s charge against Hamdan are true.” In effect, the Court stated that Article 25 of the Geneva convention (which states that “[p]risoners of war shall be quartered under conditions as favorable as those for the forces of the Detaining Power who are billeted in the same area”) does not apply to Guantanamo Bay.

The most worrying element of the ruling, however, is the decision that Congress’s not specifically outlining such tribunals in legislation such as the Detainee Treatment Act “should not imply . . . that Congress intended to deprive him of particular powers not specifically enumerated”. As Breyer stated in an individual opinion: “Nothing prevents the President from returning to Congress to seek the authority he believes necessary.”

Essentially, while such military tribunals are currently illegal, the court did not rule that they were unconstitutional or that the executive was overstepping its given role in performing them, but rather that they were not specifically enumerated in legislation and therefore there is a minor legislative step needed before they can go ahead. In a press conference after the ruling, Bush stated that he had already talked to a Senator willing to propose such a step in Congress.

We should not view this ruling as a prevention of Bush’s proposed military tribunals, then, but rather a minor obstacle that will soon be overcome. President Bush will likely obtain Congressional approval for them; especially considering that the only other option for the detainees is to confirm their status as Prisoners of War, and afford them all of the rights they have under the Geneva Convention — which means no military tribunals — which is a step I cannot see Bush taking.