The decision by the US Supreme Court that the prisoners held at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba have the right to challenge their captivity in American courts is wise and brave. It is wise because the notion that these captives would have no legal status at all, and for however long they were held, is wrong. It is brave because the majority on the court have acted against the wishes of the Bush Administration and, it is fair to anticipate, contrary to the instincts of many individual Americans as well.

The ruling should also be a rebuke to the many pundits (and film-makers) who claim that American democracy has been a victim of the political atmosphere created by the September 11, 2001, atrocities. It plainly has not. The court’s firm stance in this instance echoes other occasions when its members have inconvenienced the executive in times of war. This judgment is in a similar spirit to that of Youngstown Sheet and Tube Co v Sawyer (1952) when the court insisted that the pressing demands of the Korean War did not permit Harry S. Truman to nationalise, even temporarily, sections of the steel industry. Truman loathed that verdict. George W. Bush will not care for this one. He and his colleagues will, nevertheless, be obliged to comply with it.

The position of the Guantanamo detainees has become a matter of enormous controversy. It is possible that some of the men held in Cuba have been victims of misfortune. It should not be forgotten, though, that the vast majority were picked up in and around the battlefield in Afghanistan and were not on holiday there. It has been a legitimate presumption that they were fighting for the Taleban and/or al-Qaeda. The US legal system will now have the chance to test their protests and release them if necessary. These are not rights that the deposed regime in Kabul or Osama bin Laden would have awarded to their opponents.

This result should prompt the President to move more swiftly. Rather than risk the embarrassment of further legal defeat, the Administration should process these individuals at a more vigorous speed. This is not an easy exercise and there is the chance that dubious characters will be placed at liberty. But the Pentagon should aim, by the end of this year, to release, repatriate or to put on open trial all those originally captured in late 2001. It would also be sensible for officials of the Administration to provide more information explaining why these individuals were arrested.

It is too early to tell how many, if any, of these prisoners will eventually win freedom in US courtrooms. That the ruling is a victory for the American judiciary over its misguided critics should not be doubted. The Supreme Court was described by Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes as “quiet”, but only because it was the “quiet of a storm centre”. This court has correctly placed itself at the centre of this political storm and re-emphasised the importance of the rule of law.