Attorney General John Ashcroft faces Senate Judiciary Committee fire from both sides of the aisle this week on the President’s military order establishing a system of military tribunals to try non-citizen suspected terrorists. The dramatic order angered Committee members who had not been consulted in advance of the announcement.

Under the new order, the President has sole power to decide who is to be tried in these courts. The trials will be held in secret, relying on evidence barred in civil criminal court. They are to be overseen by military officers – no jury of peers – who may impose the death penalty on a two-thirds vote. Conversations between attorneys and their clients are subject to surveillance and there are no appeals of the verdicts.

The order is the boldest initiative in a flurry of laws and rewritten regulations that profoundly alter our justice system. The trend began with the “U.S.A. Patriot Act,” which greatly expands the definition of a terrorist. It grants unparalleled power to the Attorney General, who may hold indefinitely any non-citizen whom he has “reasonable grounds to believe” is “engaged in any activity that endangers the national security of the United States.”

A number of additional measures have been enacted, most without any Congressional consultation:

• Justice officials may now secretly eavesdrop on conversations between lawyers and clients in federal custody.
  
  
• At least 1,000 legal foreign residents are being detained, often without charge – illegal for U.S. citizens.
  
  
• Mr. Ashcroft will oversee a “wartime reorganization” of the Justice Department that will move lawyers and staff to anti-terrorism activities and away from other critical issues, like civil and voting rights.

Law-abiding Americans are supposed to feel reassured – we are, after all, not terrorists. But observers point out that waivers of constitutional rights seldom remain contained, as zealous police and prosecutors often overreach their legal boundaries unless restrained by laws and judges. European allies balk at the possibility of extraditing suspects who could face trial in the tribunals, and civil libertarians and law enforcement officials alike point out that the Administration’s measures often mean singling out people on the basis of nationality or ethnicity.