In what may be only a temporary victory for President Bush, the Supreme Court has rejected by a 6-3 margin an appeal by suspected terrorists challenging their imprisonment at Guantánamo Bay.

The prisoners are contesting their imprisonment and the rules set up to try them as war criminals outside of the federal court system.

Washington lawyer Tom Wilner, who has represented Guantánamo detainees for the last five years, said that the ruling is “a perfect example of ‘justice delayed is justice denied.’ All these people ever wanted was a fair hearing.”

The ruling may be only a temporary setback for the plaintiffs. In a brief order written by Justices John Paul Stevens and Anthony Kennedy, the court suggested the detainees could appeal once their tribunals or preliminary hearings have been completed.

SCOTUSBlog put the development in this context:

[T]he Court today denied the cert. petitions in the Guantanamo detainee cases, choosing instead to wait until the Pentagon’s detention decisions have been reviewed by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, as prescribed in the Detainee Treatment Act and Military Commissions Act. What this obviously means is that Justice Kennedy was unwilling to tip his hand on the merits either way within the Court. (If either block of four Justices had been confident of gaining his vote, they presumably would have voted to grant the petition.)

Justice Stevens and Justice Kennedy have been the principal architects of the Court’s detainee cases, and they wrote jointly today with a stern warning to the government not to delay the proceedings . . .

More here.