Litigation

Anti-Terrorism Ruling ?Went too Far?

By Peter Hardin

Some editorial boards sharply criticized the Supreme Court’s upholding a law that bans “material support” to foreign terrorist groups, even when the aid was meant to help them avoid violence.

“By preserving an extremely vague prohibition on aiding and associating with terrorist groups, the court reduced the First Amendment rights of American citizens,” a New York Times editorial said.

The editorial, and a similar one in the Los Angeles Times, favored a reading of the anti-terrorism law that was offered by Justice Stephen Breyer in a dissent. He outlined a standard that would make the type of speech or association involved in the case criminal “only when the defendant knows or intends that those activities will assist the organization’s unlawful terrorist actions.”

“Congress should make it clear that it agrees,” the Los Angeles Times editorial stated.

In the Washington Post, an editorial said that with its decision, the court “went too far.”

But the 6-3 decision was applauded by an editorial in the New York Daily News, entitled “Supremely good sense,” and a Wall Street Journal editorial cheered it as one of three rulings issued in one day that reversed the “notoriously liberal” Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

You can learn more about the decision from Gavel Grab, and more about the USA Patriot Act, which bolstered the anti-terrorism statute, from Justice at Stake?s page on National Security and Civil Liberties.

Full post as published by The Gavel on June 22, 2010 (boomark / email).