I agree with this op-ed in today’s Washington Post by David B. Rivkin Jr. and Lee A. Casey, which questions the conventional wisdom that the Supreme Court slapped down the Bush Administration in the “war on terrorism” cases. An excerpt:

[W]hen all these cases are read together — the Guantanamo Bay case, along with the court’s decisions in Hamdi v. Rumsfeld and Rumsfeld v. Padilla (both involving American citizens held in the United States as captured enemy combatants) — they mark a significant reaffirmation of the president’s constitutional authority as commander in chief in time of war.

In the context of these cases, the court accepted the following critical propositions: that the United States is engaged in a legally cognizable armed conflict with al Qaeda and the Taliban, to which the laws of war apply; that “enemy combatants” captured in the context of that conflict can be held “indefinitely” without criminal trial while that conflict continues; that American citizens (at least those captured overseas) can be classified and detained as enemy combatants, confirming the authority of the court’s 1942 decision in Ex Parte Quirin (the “Nazi saboteur” case); and that the role of the courts in reviewing such designations is limited. All these points had been disputed by one or more of the detainees’ lawyers, and all are now settled in the government’s favor.

Boalt law school professor John Yoo struck a similar chord in a Wall Street Journal piece one month ago.