Yesterday, the Supreme Court heard arguments in the case of Boumediene v. Bush -- something that it shouldn't be doing in the first place. The case presents the court with the question of whether terrorists captured on foreign battlefields and held in foreign lands have the right to challenge their detention in U.S. courts.

This is the same court that ruled last year that the al Qaeda is covered by the Geneva conventions because the international terrorist group isn't a nation. A portion of the conventions designed to exempt civil wars was reread by a bunch of dishonest judges to apply to stateless terrorists.

Once again, Justice Anthony Kennedy will be the deciding vote. The court's leftist quartet once again appears to be more concerned with doing what they see as right (it's mean to lock up terrorists waging war against the U.S. for a long time) instead of what the law requires. And Congress has been pretty darn clear on what the law requires -- it overruled a previous Supreme Court ruling by passing a new law stripping the Supreme Court from jurisdiction in these cases -- a law they seem determined to ignore.

As former Justice Department officials David B. Rivkin Jr. and Lee A. Casey put it in an op-ed in today's Wall Street Journal:

The MCA established a system of military tribunals to try the Guantanamo detainees, again with appeals to the U.S. Court of Appeals in Washington, D.C., and the Supreme Court. The law also stated with remarkable clarity that these procedures excluded all other judicial review for detainee claims, past, present and future. As one judge wrote in dismissing Mr. Boumedienne's case after the MCA [Military Commissions Act] was enacted--"it is almost as if the [congressional] proponents of these words were slamming their fists on the table shouting 'When we say 'all,' we mean all--without exception.'"

Last April, the Supreme Court appeared to agree, refusing to revive the appeals. Unfortunately, it changed its mind in June, agreeing to consider whether Congress can constitutionally refuse the Guantanamo detainees--who are not U.S. citizens or held on U.S. territory--access to habeas corpus rights. This is not a close question. When the framers adopted the Constitution to "secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity" they were not talking about enemy aliens overseas engaged in a war against the republic they founded.

In a few short months we'll see if the Supreme Court continues to act as an unelected oligarchy, overruling laws passed by the representatives of the people because they don't like the way terrorists are being treated.

If the court continues to insert itself where it does not belong, then expect U.S. policy to change. Soldiers on the battlefield will have to quickly weigh whether or not terrorists they've captured have important intelligence information. If they don't, expect the policy to quickly become "kill not capture."

On the political front, if the court continues its push to grant ever-more rights to terrorists, expect judges to become a big issue in the general election campaign. On the left they will -- as they have done every four years -- warn against the overturning of Roe v. Wade. But the same judges a President Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama or John Edwards would appoint would also be the soft-on-terrorism type. The GOP is more trusted on national security -- and this ruling may highlight that difference.

Further reading:

• Jan Crawford Greenburg reports over at ABC News.
• Marty Lederman has this over at Scotusblog.
• Orin Kerr has a post over at the Volokh Conspiracy.
• The transcript of the oral arguments is here in PDF format.
• You can listen to the oral arguments here.