'Padilla' Tests President's Powers in Terror War
Deputy Solicitor General Paul Clement on Monday faced sharp questioning by federal appeals judges who doubted the president's claim of wide-ranging authority to seize an American citizen on U.S. soil as an enemy combatant in the war against terror.Two out of three judges on a panel of the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, Rosemary S. Pooler and Barrington D. Parker Jr., bluntly challenged Clement's argument that alleged al-Qaida associate Jose Padilla can be denied counsel and be held indefinitely.
Parker said that the degree of executive authority urged by Clement was "breathtaking in its sweep," and that giving the president this type of power with only a "modest kind of judicial review" would cause "a sea change in the constitutional life of this country."
The rest is here from the New York Law Journal.