confirming vote largely split along party lines 60–36 (54 Republicans and 6 Democrats in favor, and 36 Democrats against, along with 4 abstentions: 3 Democrat and 1 Republican). He was sworn in on February 3, 2005. Right to writ of habeas corpus in the U.S. Constitution Gonzales helped draft the January 2002 Presidential Order that authorized the use of military tribunals to try terrorist suspects. The order provided the President the power to hold any non-citizen who he deemed a terrorist, or accessory to a terrorist, in military detention and subject to trial before a military commission. Subsequently the United States Department of Defense (DOD) organized military tribunals to judge charges against enemy combatant detainees being held at Guantanamo Bay detention camp. In the early years, the camp authorities did not allow foreign detainees access to attorneys, or materials supporting their charges, and the executive branch declared them outside the reach of due process under habeas corpus. In Rasul v. Bush (2004), the US Supreme Court ruled that they did have rights to habeas corpus and had to be provided access to legal counsel and an opportunity to challenge their detention before an impartial tribunal. Further, in 2006, the Supreme Court ruled in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld that trying Guantanamo Bay detainees under the existing Guantanamo military commission (known also as Military Tribunal) was illegal under US law, including the Geneva Conventions. The president requested and Congress passed the Military Commissions Act of 2006. The bill was controversial for continuing to authorize the President to designate certain people as "unlawful enemy combatants," thus making them subject to military commissions, and depriving them of habeas corpus. In Boumediene v. Bush (2008), the US Supreme Court ruled that foreign detainees held by the United States, including those at Guantanamo Bay detention camp, did have the right of habeas corpus under the US constitution, as the US had sole authority at the Guantanamo Bay base. It held that the 2006 Military Commissions Act was an unconstitutional suspension of that right. On January 18, 2007, Gonzales was invited to speak to the Senate Judiciary Committee, where he shocked the committee's ranking member, Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, with statements regarding the right of habeas corpus in the United States Constitution. An excerpt of the exchange follows: Senator Specter was referring to 2nd Clause of Section 9 of Article One of the Constitution of the United States,