A sharply divided Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals has upheld the President's power to detain an American citizen indefinitely upon designating him an "enemy combatent."

A sharply divided federal appeals court today upheld President Bush's authority to detain indefinitely as an enemy combatant a United States citizen captured on the battlefield and to deny him access to a lawyer.

The judges today did not issue a majority opinion, just an order upholding the January decision. Four of them, however, on either side of the issue, wrote separate, sometimes harshly worded opinions, demonstrating the deep divisions in a case that essentially presents a stark and fundamental clash between the nation's security interests and its citizens' civil liberties.

A dissenting judge, Diana Gribbon Motz said:

The January ruling "marks the first time in our history that a federal court has approved the elimination of protections afforded a citizen by the Constitution solely on the basis of the executive's designation of that citizen as an enemy combatant, without testing the accuracy of the designation."

Our prior coverage of the Hamdi case and the lower court decision is here.