Before jumping on that loveboat of support for Supreme Court candidate Merrick Garland, consider his record. The DC circuit court decisions he was a part of -- and the chief of -- closed down habeas corpus options for Guantanamo prisoners. "As one wartime detention case after another has pitted state security powers against individual rights, he has often -- though not always -- deferred to the government," notes NY Times correspondent Charlie Savage.
Allegiance to former President George W. Bush's policy of indefinite detentions (that federal courts had no jurisdiction to hear Guantánamo detainee lawsuits, Al Odah v. United States 2003, later struck down by the Supreme Court) might endear Obama's nominee to Republican senators -- with expectation of impunity for collusion in state terror.
But "if the story is, as to me it should be, whether Justice Garland would meaningfully improve governmental accountability in the exercise of national security and counterterrorism policy, it seems clear to me that the answer is both that he wouldn't, and, without more help, that he couldn't," writes Steve Vladeck at Just Security.
