This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Friday, January 8th, 2010.

I'm Caleb Brown.

The Adam Walsh Child Protection and Safety Act was supposed to do what its name implied.

But in practice, one of the law's provisions allows the attorney general to

indefinitely extend the confinement of convicts who by all accounts have done their time.

The Supreme Court hears a challenge to part of that law next week.

Ilia Shapiro, editor of the Cato Supreme Court Review, comments.

A few years ago Congress passed the Adam Walsh Child Safety and Protection Act.

A noble goal protecting children, everybody likes children.

The problem is there's just one provision that

provided for the civil commitment of individuals held in the Federal Bureau of

Prisons, so cons who are about to be let out,

when the Attorney General certifies that they are, quote, sexually dangerous,

then the Federal Government can hold them indefinitely.

Now, the problem with this... federal government can hold them indefinitely.

Now the problem with this, there might be several.

There might be a criminological problem with this, there might be a due process problem with this,

but what concerns us, and this is the focus of our amicus brief

is that Congress the federal government doesn't have the power to just hold

somebody that didn't violate any federal law.

They were sentenced, they served their time, and now they're just being held indefinitely

on the say-so of the attorney general because they're quote-unquote

...