Supreme court

THE SUPREME COURT : MISSING IN ACTION

Introduction

Since the foundation of the United States of America , the Supreme Court has played a key role in giving the guidance to the public and the government alike in advancement of democracy . Most of all it has played key role in ensuring the individual rights and liberty are guaranteed and in protecting individual from the excesses of the executives and the legislative bodies . Therefore we can argue that the Supreme Court at the helm of criminal justice system has been the custodian of individual

rights and liberty in the country . However , since September 11 terrorist attack and the consequent war on terror , the Supreme Court has been a shadow of its former self and has failed to ensure the protection of individual rights and liberties in pursuit of fighting terrorism through interrogation and detention of suspects . It has failed to highlight the human rights issues that are violated by the legal framework that has been put in place or by the act of the executive and the legislature in handling terror suspect . The Supreme Court is important in ensuring the egalitarian principle of equality for all is ensured and that the human right charter is not violated in any laws or any act of our government . Failure of the high court therefore means that individuals are not guaranteed of their freedom and liberty . In this we are going to review and critically analyze how the Supreme Court has failed in its mandate to protect civil rights and individual liberty for individual suspected of terrorism activities

Failure of Supreme Court

The government is made up of the three major arms . There is the executive , the legislature and the judiciary . The legislative body of the government ensures that there are laws which upon which the executive arm of the government should act . The judiciary on the other hand helps in interpreting the application of those laws while the executive ensure the execution of the law . This is a basic analysis that can help us to distinguish between the three arms . However we should understand the three arms are important to ensure that there is a check and balance of the other in the way they act

Since September 11 attack we have had a scenario where all the three arms have not been participating equally in the fight against terrorism For the first time in the history of the county , the executive and in this regard the president , acted alone without the involvement of the congress or the supreme court which are the other two arms supposed to participate in making decisions for the war on terror . More noticeable was the failure of the Supreme Court to ensure that constitution debates that followed upheld the human right charter . According to Fontana we note that the Supreme Court has failed its mandate in the following ways

The courts have failed to focus on human right issues but rather has focused on structural issue in the...