Everyone the US takes into custody needs to be given some kind of legal "status" and some kind of legal recourse. I don't know if full access to civilain courts is the answer, but the Supreme Court does not provide suggestions on what to do, they rule on the legality of esxisting laws and lower court decisions. Maybe there is a better answer, but it's not the job of the court to say what it is.

But I believe there absolutely needs to be some kind of legal status and legal recourse. If you capture a member of an enemy army during a war, that soldier has a legal status as a POW --- they don't have access to civilian courts, but they don't just disappear into a hole. If you take an accused criminal into custody, that criminal has a legal status too and doesn't just disappear into a hole. The administration has said basically that these accused terrorists are not members of a foreign army, so they are not POWs. And they are not accused criminals in the normal legal sense. Since they aren't either of those two things, they are some other class of prisoner "enemy combatant," and they have no rights at all. I think it's un-American.

If these detainiees are neither POWs nor accused criminals, then the governemnt needs to develop a legal definition for them and rules for processing them that are constitutional. You can't just leave it at, Oh heck, we're not sure what you are, so we're just going to lock you up forever with no access to lawyers or courts. We're not going to tell you why you're here. We're not going to tell your family or your government where you are. Too bad you are just so legally confusing!

The reason these people need some kind of legal recourse is that we know for a fact that some people have been held as "enemy combatants" WHO WERE NOT TERRORISTS! 60 Minutes had a feature a couple of months ago about a German guy who was picked up in Pakistan, accused of a bogus terrorism-related charge, held for several years in Gitmo and tortured during that time. Is that what this country is about? Tell someone he is German, so he doesn't get to enjoy the rights of an American citizen? Accuse him of terrorism without any proof, hold him incommunicado, and torture him? Doesn't sound American to me. That is a slippery slope to YOU losing YOUR rights, people!

When you ask, "During the Revolutionary war, Civil war, WW1, WW2, etc....were ALL prisoners allowed their day in our civil courts?" No, probably none of them had access to civilian courts, but at least in WWII they had a legal status as POWs. It's up to the government to develop a new legal status if one is needed.

EDIT: Before anyone gets on me for being "soft" on terrorists, let me just say I have no sympathy for them whatsoever. If they are found to be terrorists, I'm OK with hanging them. I just don't think the US should be able to snatch someone up without even saying what they are accused of and hold them in prison indefinitely with no access to any legal status. It's been 7 years. We've had time to figure out what we are going to do with them!