In two major rulings, the Supreme Court yesterday ruled the Bush administration cannot hold enemy combatants in this country or at Guantanamo Bay without giving them the ability to challenge their detention in court. The pair of rulings was a major setback to the Bush administration and its so-called war on terror.

In the case of Yaser Hamdi, the court ruled 8-to-1 that the government cannot indefinitely hold U.S. citizens without providing a way for them to challenge their detention. Hamdi is a U.S. born citizen who was detained in Afghanistan. President Bush declared him to be an enemy combatant and said that the US could detain him indefinitely without ever presenting evidence against him, without ever pressing charges and without ever allowing him to challenge the ruling. But the court ruled this was unconstitutional.

Justice Sandra Day O’Connor wrote in the court’s majority opinion, “We have long since made clear that a state of war is not a blank check for the president when it comes to the rights of the nation’s citizens.”

Justice Antonin Scalia added “The very core of liberty secured by our Anglo-Saxon system of separated powers has been freedom from indefinite imprisonment at the will of the Executive.”

Clarence Thomas was the only justice to support the administration’s policy on Hamdi.

In the case of the Guantanamo Bay detainees, the court ruled 6-3 that the 600 or so non-citizens being held at the naval base on Cuba have the right to file writs of habeas corpus in federal court to challenge their detention. The government had claimed the detainees had no right to access the courts because the base is outside the sovereign territory of the United States.