Pushed by a surprise Supreme Court decision, major changes in policy regarding the hundreds of detainees held at Guantanamo Bay are expected. Rather than continued legal fights, the Bush administration should close the detention center in Cuba and bring to the United States those prisoners who truly pose a threat.

After the U.S. Supreme Court last year ruled that trying detainees in secret military tribunals violated U.S. law and the Geneva Conventions, Congress rewrote the tribunal law. The 2006 law authorizing special military courts included a specific provision eliminating the right of habeas corpus for noncitizens declared by the executive branch to be “unlawful enemy combatants.” It also voided pending habeas corpus lawsuits by nearly 200 of the 400 detainees still at Guantanamo.

The first two cases to come to trial under the Military Commissions Act were thrown out in June by two different judges because the detainees were classified as “enemy combatants,” not “unlawful enemy combatants.”

Before the Commissions Act, Congress in 2005 passed the Detainee Treatment Act, which eliminated habeas corpus for all detainees at Guantanamo. Dozens of detainees challenged that law in court. A federal appeals court ruled against them in February and the Supreme Court declined to review the appeals court’s decision in April.

The high court reversed itself last month, in a move that court experts called unusual. The court, in its last day of the 2006 session, said it would hold hearings on the matter in its next term, possibly before the end of this year.

The cases, which the court consolidated into one, involve writs of habeas corpus filed by nearly four dozen detainees at Guantanamo. They have asked federal judges to decide whether it was constitutional to hold them without their being charged or having access to lawyers.

The ruling signals that Justice Anthony Kennedy, the internationalist on the court, is unhappy about the Guantanamo situation and how it has tarnished the U.S. image abroad, says Michael Greenberger who teaches counterterrorism law at the University of Maryland School of Law. When the court in April refused to hear the case, Justices Kennedy and David Souter issued an unusual opinion saying they might want to reconsider this issue. No one expected that reconsideration to come so soon.

Rather than wait for a Supreme Court ruling that will likely go against the administration’s policy and that could overrule more than just the habeas denial, professor Greenberger said it is likely that the solicitor general will recommend that the White House avoid this by bringing detainees to the United States.

Some of this work is already under way. Pentagon and administration officials say that legislation is being drafted to divide detainees into three groups. The most dangerous would be put into military brigs in the United States for continued indefinite confinement. A second group would be put on trial in military courts. The least dangerous detainees, who make up the largest group, would be sent to their home countries.

Closing Guantanamo would end a shameful era and set the course for returning the United States to a country of rights.