Convictions: Slate's blog on legal issues

The President Reacts

A sign of what's to come?

Here's the president's statement in response to Boumediene, courtesy of CNN:

President Bush, who is traveling in Europe, said he disagreed with the Guantanamo ruling but promised to abide by it.

"Congress and the administration worked very carefully on a piece of legislation that set the appropriate procedures in place as to how to deal with the detainees," he said. "We'll study this opinion, and we'll do so with this in mind to determine whether or not additional legislation might be appropriate so that we can safely say, truly say to the American people. 'We are doing everything we can to protect you.' "

Notice the president focuses on deciding whether there needs to be a legislative response to ensure "we are doing everything we can to protect you" rather than to correct the procedural deficiencies in the current legislation that led the court to conclude that it failed to provide the habeas right the Constitution guarantees in the absence of a valid suspension. In other words, it does not sound like the legislation he has in mind would be what we ordinarily think of as a legislative "fix."