The judges who ride the Fourth Circuit made the right decision this week in rejecting arguments made on behalf of Yaser Esam Hamdi. Mr. Hamdi claimed that he has been held unconstitutionally in a Norfolk brig. The government argued that the Louisiana-born Muslim was an enemy combatant against America when he was captured fighting with the Taliban in Afghanistan, and therefore is not entitled to the same constitutional protections as an American citizen.

“Because it is undisputed that Hamdi was captured in a zone of active combat in a foreign theater of conflict … ” the decision reads, “the Commander in Chief has constitutionally detained Hamdi.” The judges deserve credit for seeing through the muddled logic of the defense, who argue that Mr. Hamdi should be coddled by the government he did battle against.

What is harder to understand is the sheer number of intelligent persons — specifically, professors of law at public universities or at universities receiving federal funding — who filed briefs on Mr. Hamdi’s behalf. After all, it is not as if the Taliban and Al Qaeda took up arms against some obscure abstraction. They were fighting against the very American government that acts as benefactor to these universities. They were fighting against the states that these universities serve.

In other words, they were taking up arms against the professors and their students, too. One need not strain the imagination to wonder what kind of academic freedom or respect for civil liberties would exist in a world dominated by the worldview of Mr. Hamdi and his cohorts; that world existed in Afghanistan, and has mercifully passed. Had America been acting by Mr. Hamdi’s system of justice, he would not still be alive.

The list of individuals and organizations that chose to go before the court on behalf of Mr. Hamdi’s lost cause is seven pages long. In New Jersey, Illinois, California, Oregon, even here in New York, these people are training thousands of law school students. The next generation of prosecutors, public defenders, and political leaders are captive to professors with a muddled view of right and wrong.