For his part, the Pentagon chief, Robert Gates, who is attending a NATO conference in Brussels, Belgium, said that the defense department was examining the implications of the Supreme Court ruling.

"Obviously we're going to have to take a look at it. And see what the implications are. But the ruling of the court is the law of the land. And we will have to look at what the implications are for us," he said.

In this image reviewed by the US Military, soldiers in a Humvee patrol the perimeter of the Camp Delta detention compound at Guantanamo Bay US Naval Base in Cuba June 6, 2008.(Xinhua/Reuters Photo) 

By voting 5-4, the Supreme Court ruled that the Guantanamo Bay foreign prisoners "have the constitutional privilege of habeas corpus" to challenge their detention before US federal judges.

"We hold these petitioners do have the habeas corpus privilege," Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote for the court majority in the 70-page opinion. "The laws and Constitution are designed to survive, and remain in force, in extraordinary times."

The liberal-dominated justices found that the Navy base, in fact, was operating as if it were on US soil, so its detainees deserved the same constitutional rights as all other Americans.