Judicial Hierarchy and the Law

At the heart of the Supreme Court's power is the respect for the rule of law. This principle says that we ought to set aside our personal political preferences in deference to the determination of legitimate organs of law. (The problem of what to do when confronted with illegitimate organs of law is the subject of Jefferson and Locke, but even they argue that the rejection of false legal authority must be accompanied by an appeal to legal reason.) More than any other branch of government, the judiciary depends upon adherance to this principle because courts have no guns and no money to use as enforcement tools; they must depend on someone else to make their decisions hold.

As Ronald Dworkin argued recently in The New York Review of Books, the current five-member majority of the US Supreme Court has undermined that principle by making what he calls "embarrasingly bad decisions."
I'm not sure I agree with Dworkin in the degree of his criticism, but I do marvel at the willingness of these five people to rewrite long-standing law while at the same time declaring their allegiance to stare decisis.

But even more alarming is the possible deliberate disregard for Supreme Court rulings by the DC Circuit Court. As the circuit solely responsible for the application of Supreme Court decisions on detentions at Guantanamo, the DC court has enormous power. I can't think of a punishment harsh enough if the suspicions raised by some scholars are true -- that the DC circuit has deliberately ignored rule set down by a majority of the Supreme Court in Boumedienne v. Bush.