Boumediene--Robert's dissent

Roberts referred to the mechanism for Gitmo detainees as "the most generous set of procedural protections ever afforded aliens detained by this country as enemy combatants."

As far as the Combatant Status Review Tribunals (CSRTs) are concerned, one military insider has a different take. Col. Abraham, an Army Reserve officer described them as a rubber-stamp designed to ratify decisions already made. The CSRTs don't permit the detainee counsel or the ability to see the evidence against him and permits unlimited hearsay evidence.

His argument that the court's action was premature since the appellate procedures under the Detainee Treatment Act hadn't been exhausted was eloquently answered by Souter's concurrence, which pointed out that many of these people had already been there for six years. As a recent McClatchy story pointed out, many of them were innocent. Further, since the DTA only permits the DC Appellate Court to look at the procedures and whether they were followed, there is no review of the ruling on the case itself. As Roberts himself admitted, any protection offered is because "CSRT and D. C.Circuit review to operate together, with the goal of providing noncitizen detainees the level of collateral process Hamdi said would satisfy the due process
rights of American citizens. " Thus, the inadequacies of CSRT doom Roberts's dissent.

Roberts also places much stock in the ability of the DC Circuit to send the case back to a CSRT for a new assessment. However, without any ability to change the flaws that make the CSRT a rubber-stamp process, such a step is meaningless.