Holding court...

The Supreme Court is the right venue for a decision to be made about the rights of terror detainees to demand their release

The prerogatives and traditions of the U.S. Supreme Court make it impossible to know which justices reversed course and voted to hear a case whose central issue is the right of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to argue for their release.

But whoever the justices are (three of the nine voted earlier this year to hear the matter, and presumably those three and two new converts made for the surprising vote late last week), a dignified doff of the hat is in order. Few other American legal doctrines are held in higher esteem than habeas corpus, the right of ordinary people to challenge in court their confinement by the government. Under what circumstances, if any, that right should apply to non-citizens held by U.S. authorities outside this country is an issue the high court should resolve.

The legal point that will go before the justices this fall is fairly narrow. Yet the decision will have wide implications.

In the wars following the 2001 al-Qaeda terror attacks, the U.S. military captured suspected terrorists, a number of whom weren't citizens of the nations where they were captured (principally Afghan-istan and Iraq). Such statelessness complicates matters, along with the fact that the detainees weren't fighting as members of a conventional military force.

If they were prisoners of war, a status defined in international law, determining their rights would be relatively easy. But the U.S. considers them unlawful enemy combatants, which makes their legal status far murkier.

In response to concerns by the Bush administration, Congress passed a law saying that federal courts couldn't second-guess military officers on how detainees should be handled legally. Lower courts upheld the law. The Supreme Court justices decided that they will decide.

The international community largely sided with the United States when it opened hostilities against al-Qaeda's patrons in Afghanistan, the Taliban. But after it rushed to war with Iraq -- where the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse scandal tarnished America's reputation -- the White House raised understandable concerns about how detainees would be treated.

It made things worse by resisting international attempts to monitor who was locked up at the U.S. Navy's Guantanamo base in Cuba and how the prisoners fared. Friends and foes overseas expressed those worries. So did Americans sensitive to the rule of law.

The administration's position has been further weakened by recent criticism from observers well acquainted with the military tribunals that are evaluating some detainees' status. The critics say that the process for evidence gathering is haphazard and that commanders pressure military panels to rule that prisoners are being held properly.

The struggle against radical Islamic terrorists isn't likely to end soon; the car-bomb incidents in Great Britain over the weekend are cases in point. Other combatants are likely to end up in U.S. custody, so a process is needed for dealing with dangerous or potentially dangerous individuals that is legally sound and morally defensible.

That process should conform to this country's tradition of bending over backward to protect civil rights and should be sensitive to America's standing as a place where the rule of law is paramount. The Supreme Court has an essential role in finding that balance.