Arar v. Ashcroft

The Supreme Court rejected a lawsuit from a Canadian citizen over the federal government's role in his transfer to Syria as a terrorism suspect. In Arar v. Ashcroft, Maher Arar had sued top Bush administration officials, including former Attorney General John Ashcroft, for being detained as a terrorism suspect in New York shortly after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks and pursuant to the government's secret rendition program. Arar argued that under the program he was sent to Syria where he was tortured, The Associated Press reports. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit declined to hear Arar's case, concluding that the Congress, not the courts must determine a remedy. In May, the Obama administration intervened in the case asking the high court not to hear Arar's appeal, saying that the executive branch should not be found accountable by the judiciary. The Canadian government, the AP reports, apologized to Arar for its involvement in his transfer to Syria and agreed to pay him $10 million.

In a press statement, David Cole, a cooperating attorney with the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR), which represented Arar said, "The courts have regrettably refused to right the egregious wrong done to Maher Arar. But the courts have never questioned that a wrong was done. They have simply said that it is up to the political branches to fashion a remedy. We are deeply disappointed that the courts have shirked their responsibility. But this decision only underscores the moral responsibility of those to whom the courts deferred - President Obama and Congress - to do the right thing and redress Arar's injuries."

In other Court action, the justices added more cases to its next term, including a case involving a panel of three federal judges that ordered California to cut its burgeoning prison population by 46,000 inmates and to improve its health care treatment or prisoners. The special federal court panel ruled last year that prisoners in the California's 33 prisons were being denied adequate medical care as required by the Constitution, reports the Los Angeles Times. "Because overcrowding was the ‘primary cause,'" the federal court "ordered the state to cap its prison population at 137% of capacity," the newspaper reports. Gov. Schwarzenegger appealed the federal panel's opinion, arguing that it did not have authority to intervene in the state's corrections system. The court will hear Schwarzenegger v. Plata in the fall.

The high court also issued opinions in four cases: Dolan v. United States, Holland v. Florida, Astrue v. Ratliff, and Carachuri-Rosendo v. Holder.

In Holland, the Court overturned an opinion by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit that barred a death row inmate from asking the federal courts to stop his execution, because his lawyer did not file paperwork in time. The standard that the federal appeals court employed to determine if the lawyer's actions were cause for granting a review was "too rigid," Justice Stephen Breyer wrote for the majority. Lodging a dissent Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas said Congress had not given judges the authority to extend appeals deadlines, the AP reports. "Thus, when a state habeas petitioner's appeal is filed too late because of attorney error, the petitioner is out luck," Scalia wrote. See SCOTUSblog for analysis of today's orders and opinions.