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i am becoming increasingly baffled about why you are taking such a narrow view of this matter, mojo. the conversation has shifted into broader areas--the politics of the term terrorism, the problems of evidence, the reasons that might follow from that for a state to refuse due process...all of which you seem to want to bypass, cast as irrelevant, because you are convinced (for reasons that i have read through but do not find compelling mostly because i do not and cannot follow you in seeing this in such truncated terms) that indefinite detenetions without trial are legal.
one of the virtues of common law tradition is that you cannot arbitrarily exclude political considerations. the weight that precedent has in this tradition makes the tradition adaptable to changing political situations, to history. you are not working in a civil law tradition, in which it is assumed that law as written from the outset is more or less perfect, precedent has no particular de jure weight (de facto is another matter, but tant pis), judges are sinple functionaries who applyt the letter of the law, etc. i assume that your basic philosophy of law comes from a neocon position, maybe looped through the federalist society/"original intent" type nonsense, which tries to use bitching about "judicial activism" as an excuse to lobby politically for a shift out of common law toward civil law in the name of adherence to the "spirit" of a late 18th century document--a "spirit" that is, of course, arbitrary, rooted in the dispositions particular to a conservative political movement that would have no particular weight--nor any possibility of weight--were the system within which is operates not rooted in common law.
woudl you care to explain your basic relation to these questions? it would make for a more interesting conversation with you than seems currently possible, and maybe enable all of us to avoid recourse to ben stiller films as if they functioned to explain or enlighten.
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a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear
it make you sick.
-kamau brathwaite
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