A tie vote in the Supreme Court ordinarily simply affirms the lower court decision, without issuing an opinion or setting a precedent. But in this case, there is no lower court opinion on the jurisdictional question, since there was no Detainee Treatment Act when the appeals court ruled last July.

It would require a majority, five of the eight votes, to grant the government's motion to dismiss the case, but the matter might not be as straightforward as that. Even if the government had not filed its motion, the court would still be obliged to assure itself that it has jurisdiction to proceed, in this as in any other case. Whether a tie favors jurisdiction or dismissal appears to be an open question of Supreme Court procedure.

Update, by Last Night in Little Rock (early Monday): According to PaperChase and Newsweek, in a speech in Switzerland on March 8,

Scalia said bluntly that "foreigners, in foreign countries, have no rights under the American Constitution." In reference to detainees receiving civil court trials instead of facing military tribunals, Scalia said of a prisoner, "If he was captured by my army on a battlefield, that is where he belongs. I had a son on that battlefield and they were shooting at my son, and I'm not about to give this man who was captured in a war a full jury trial. I mean it's crazy."

Once again, Justice Scalia, so free to speak his mind, checks his judicial ethics at the door and tells the public how he is going to vote. He wiggled out of it in the "duck blind justice" case, but it is appearing more and more that Scalia's judicial temperament, something already akin to an oxymoron, is a thing of the past.