Dumb question: What is habeous corpus?? I didn't do so well in Goverment back in High School...
Habeas Corpus, in Latin, "to have the body," is a legal term originating from England back in the Middle Ages. It allows somebody that has been arrested to learn what he has been arrested for and to be brought before a judge. Individuals at Guantanamo Bay right now are not afforded the right of habeas corpus, because otherwise we'd have to charge them with something instead of just holding them (illegally) forever.
As you can see from
this article, habeas corpus has been under severe attack since the "war on terrorism" began. The Supreme Court has repeatedly slapped the other two branches of government around saying that they cannot do what they are doing, that they are violating the constitution. Needless to say, the past decade has been a horrible example of how human rights are supposed to work, and our federal government has turned a blind eye over the variety of civil rights violations they have promoted. The Supreme Court, however, has done a pretty good job at consistently telling the feds that they are complete idiots.