Deborah Perlstein directs the U.S. Law and Security Program for the Lawyers Committee for Human Rights, and is editor of "Assessing the New Normal," a book on liberty and security in the United States since the Sept. 11 attacks. She has an excellent commentary today in the International Herald Tribune, Detained at the Whim of the President. She correctly observes that we shouldn't be fooled by the Administration's recent release of some of the Guantanamo detainees--or its decision to allow Yaser Hamdi limited access to counsel. While these are welcome measures, they are part of a "broader strategy" aimed at keeping the Supreme Court off the Administration's back so it can continue its secret and arbitrary policies on enemy combatants.

These steps are welcome. But they should be understood as part of a broader strategy. The announcement on Guantánamo comes just weeks after the Supreme Court decided to review a lower court holding that the federal courts had no jurisdiction to evaluate the legality of the Guantánamo detentions. And the decision to allow Hamdi access to a lawyer was announced on the day final briefs were due to the Supreme Court, which is now deciding whether to take the case. It is difficult to see the timing as coincidental. For the past two years, the Bush administration - far more so than previous "wartime" executives - has been very effective at keeping the courts out of the business of checking executive power.

In the two years since the Sept. 11 attacks, the administration has established a set of extra-legal structures designed to bypass the federal judiciary. It has maintained that those detained by the United States outside U.S. borders - at Guantánamo and elsewhere - are beyond the jurisdictional reach of the U.S. courts altogether. Individuals subject to military commission proceedings - which two years after their announced creation have yet to begin - are to have their fate decided by military personnel who report only to the president.