On June 12, 2008, in Boumediene v. Bush, the United States Supreme Court ruled 5-4 that detainees in Guantanamo Bay have a common law right to the writ of habeas corpus, and that a statute enacted by Congress, the Detainee Treatment Act of 2005, which...
On June 12, 2008, in Boumediene v. Bush, the United States Supreme Court ruled 5-4 that detainees in Guantanamo Bay have a common law right to the writ of habeas corpus, and that a statute enacted by Congress, the Detainee Treatment Act of 2005, which provides certain procedures for review of the detainees' status, was not an adequate and effective substitute for habeas corpus, which may not be withdrawn except in conformance with the Suspension Clause, U.S. Constitution. Art. 1, § 9, cl. 2.
The ruling opinion stresses that even when the United States acts outside its borders, its powers are not absolute and unlimited but are subject to such restrictions as are expressed in the Constitution, and that abstaining from questions involving formal sovereignty and territorial governance is one thing, to hold the political branches have the power to switch the Constitution on or off at will is quite another.
For the Korean constitutional litigation system, the Boumediene decision opens the possibility to constitute a new legal theory concerning the issue of "whether or not the Korean Constitution applies to the alien detainee in some place outside Korea controlled by Korean military forces or other kinds of administrative authority." In case Korean forces stationing abroad cause certain constitutional problems in respect of the treatment of alien detainees in facilities outside Korean borders, the detainees concerned might raise constitutional complaint according to the Korean Constitutional Litigation Act. In such occasion, the territorial jurisdiction presumably may not be permitted to Korean Constitutional Court because it belongs only to the internal jurisdictional system. In exception, however, in conditions that the administrative power acts so arbitrarily as to be estimated as switching the Constitution on or off at will and the length of the detention is unendurably sustained, then it is quite reasonable to grant the constitutional complaint raised by alien detainee before the Constitutional Court. In this regard the Boumediene decision implies much for the Korean constitutional litigation theory.