Everyone's entitled to a day in court.

Or so we were taught in America when I was young. The Constitution doesn't limit this right to citizens, as some would have us believe. It doesn't even limit the right to a jury trial. Here's what it says, even before the Bill of Rights was added (Article III, section 2):

"The Trial of all Crimes, except in Cases of Impeachment; shall be by Jury;"

Everyone's entitled to a day in court, with a jury. Not a jury of their peers (that's the Magna Carta you're thinking of, which applied only to nobles, or "peers") but a jury nonetheless.

Americans as diverse as Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and General Billy Mitchell have deliberately violated the law in order to get a day in court and use it as a forum for changing policies and laws.

Is this era coming to an end? The administration seems to think so. They might even reject the Supreme Court's jurisdiction, arguably placing the President above the law. If the US is fighting a war, then the Guantanamo detainees are POWs and entitled to Geneva Convention rights. If the US is suppressing criminal activities, then the Guantanamo detainees are criminal suspects and entitled to criminal law protections. Either way they are human beings, and entitled to the rights that human beings are naturally entitled to, according to American belief.

But not according to Justice Scalia.