Angry Republicans have blasted the Supreme Court for asserting that prisoners held by the American government at Guantanamo Bay have legal rights. They have argued that providing habeas corpus rights to the Guantanamo prisoners is being soft on terrorism.

Sadly, these Republicans don’t seem to understand what habeas corpus is. If they did understand, they would appreciate that habeas corpus isn’t a way to be soft on prisoners. It’s a method for getting smart in dealing with crime.

In testimony yesterday before the House Armed Services Committee, Stephen Olesky summarized the practical significance of the Boumediene decision by the Supreme Court:

“After almost seven years of waiting, our clients will finally receive a meaningful determination of whether there are sufficient credible facts to justify their indefinite imprisonment. They will at long last have the opportunity to demonstrate that the Government’s actions are groundless – a critical right that our Constitution wisely enshrines and protects. There is no sound reason for Congress to interfere in this process at this time and thereby delay habeas trials that are already far too long deferred and delayed.”

After seven years, only after the Supreme Court’s decision, will prisoners at Guantanamo have the opportunity to demonstrate that their imprisonment has been groundless. Consider what that means: For seven years, people have been imprisoned at Guantanamo without any opportunity to demonstrate the groundlessness of the imprisonment.

Imagine being kept in prison for years without any trial, or ever even having the chance to present an argument that there is no reason for your imprisonment. That’s the kind of injustice that no truly free nation could ever impose.

If you would retort that the prisoners at Guantanamo Bay are the worst of the worst, evil, dangerous terrorists, consider how you know that to be true. All you know is what you’ve been told by the people who have held the prisoners captive. You don’t really know whether the prisoners are guilty of any crime until a fair trial has taken place, in which evidence has been examined and debated. You can’t even know whether the prisoners have been fairly accused of any crimes if habeas corpus is withheld.

Habeas corpus doesn’t let guilty criminals off the hook. It is a fundamental legal tool in free societies that enables the government to distinguish between true criminal suspects and people who have just been mistakenly thrown into a prison cell.

It’s plainly stupid for the American government to play hardball with people who have been mistakenly imprisoned – people who never had anything to do with terrorism in the first place. Restoring the right to habeas corpus helps our government to finally get smart, and start focusing its efforts on suspects who actually have some likelihood of being connected to terrorist conspiracies.