What happens after preventive detention collapses?

Last Thursday President Obama gave a speech at the National Archives during which he discussed what he intends to do about the Guantanamo Bay prison camp. The most important part of the speech was his proposal to create, for the first time in U.S. history, a legal system of preventive detention, the prolonged detention of individuals who have not been convicted in a criminal trial.

There are very valid grounds to doubt whether the Congress would ever pass a statute creating a system of preventive detention. Regardless of political ideology, any American should be concerned about a law that allowed the government to confine someone indefinitely without an indictment. Even if the first iteration of the statue applies only to, say, non-citizen terror suspects, once the precedent is set, future Congresses could expand the parameters of preventive detention.

The teacher of Constitutional Law just set himself up for a Constitutional Fail!