Last week's Supreme Court decision invalidating the Bush administration's unilateral plans for terrorist trials has ramifications far beyond the specifics of the case involving a single Guantanamo prisoner.

The court served notice that the broad range of efforts by the administration — from indeterminate detentions and questionable interrogation practices to domestic spying — are rightly subject to Congressional oversight.

The question now: Will Congress face its responsibilities and put limits on the administration's freewheeling activities in its war on terrorism?

It should.

Congress, thus far, has acquiesced to the administration. The Supreme Court, quite correctly, has served notice that this rolling over for the White House should end.

The immediate issue has to do with a plan to put Osama bin Laden's former driver on trial before a military panel of the Bush administration's creation. This, the court said, does not square with the Uniform Code of Military Justice and the Geneva Convention.

What's needed, the ruling said, is a trial before a "regularly constituted court" with full rights and protections for the defendant. Among those rights: the ability to have the defendant and his lawyer present during the trial. The system set up by the White House up to this point did not guarantee even this minimal right.

The court made it clear it expects the White House to work with Congress to establish this legal framework. It is imperative that Congress resist the urge to rubber-stamp the current system. Rather, it should insist on tribunals that fully meet the demands of the Uniform Code and the Geneva Convention.

These standards will not prevent the United States from bringing guilty enemy combatants to trial.

But they will help demonstrate to the world that this country believes in and will adhere to proper standards of justice.