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U.S. District Judge Audrey Collins challenged President Bush's authority over the designation of certain people or groups as terrorists, branding certain parts of the order as unconstitutional. This was her reaction regarding the President's classification of 27 groups as "specially designated global terrorists" on September 24, 2001, just after the WTC bombing incident.

According to the judge on a ruling that was made public on Nov. 21, the president's order of tagging certain groups without allowing them to question it was made with inadequate caution. The same judge that had nullified several parts of the US Patriot Act two years ago encouraged the government to direct more precaution in blocking the assets of two foreign groups. This was commended by David Cole, a lawyer representing Humanitarian Law Project, who agreed with the judge's statement saying that "even in fighting terrorism the president cannot be given a blank check to blacklist anyone he considers a bad guy or a bad group and you can't imply guilt by association"

However, the US Department of Justice spokesman was uncertain concerning the issue. According to him, though they agree with the court's decision to reject many of the constitutional arguments raised by the plaintiff, they also believed that the court had made errors regarding tagging certain aspects of the executive order as unconstitutional.

Because this ruling contradicted the judge's own findings from last July where she said that she would support Bush's decisions under an anti-terrorism law, she delayed her ruling to allow more filing of legal briefs. This 45-page ruling was concerned with the Humanitarian Law Project which requests for the provision of humanitarian aid with the groups concerned.

Jade Amethyst
http://www.jump2top.com

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