Last year Senator Jon Kyl, R-Ariz., and I successfully offered a Senate amendment to stop terrorists from having the same rights in federal court that U.S. citizens do. Until the 2004 Rasul v. Bush decision, the United States had never granted captured enemy combatants access to our courts. As a result of Rasul, al-Qaida combatants were even able to sue individual soldiers and Marines.

The Graham/Kyl Amendment aimed to stem the subsequent flood of lawsuits being brought by al-Qaida detainees. Our amendment passed by an overwhelming, bipartisan 84-14 Senate vote. After extensive negotiations during a House and Senate conference committee, it was passed by the Senate on December 21, 2005 and signed into law by President Bush on December 30.

Senator Kyl and I submitted a colloquy - a series of questions and answers between senators - in the Dec. 21 Congressional Record. In accordance with that long-standing Senate practice, our statement was submitted for the record before final passage of the bill - not after - as some media outlets have reported. That day's Record also includes half a dozen statements from Democrats, which were also submitted, not spoken live.

We felt an explanation of our amendment was necessary because of the significant changes we had made since initial Senate passage.

Under Senate rules, statements that relate to pending business are automatically placed in the Record alongside any live floor proceedings. This is done as a courtesy to both the senators managing the floor as well as those wishing to have their statements recorded.

It also allows the Senate to conduct the business of the day and helps ensure senators do not have to spend their day on the floor waiting to make a statement.

In this case, our amendment, the Detainee Treatment Act, was the sole issue holding up final passage of the Department of Defense Authorization Act. We had been engaged in House-Senate negotiations for a month and Chairman John Warner, R-Va., had been exceedingly gracious in allowing us plenty of time.

While our colloquy was written to be delivered on the floor, given the length of the several thousand word statement, and the late date of Dec. 21, as a courtesy we submitted it as a written statement.

As my Senate colleague Jim DeMint said, "The practice of inserting remarks into the Congressional Record has been around for a long time and it will be around for a long time to come. Personally, I wish this practice was used more often in the Senate because the speeches, while eloquent, can be quite lengthy." And former S.C. Sen. Fritz Hollings said, "It is common, typical."

I understand that this may seem strange to someone unfamiliar with the Senate's operations. But it is certainly not unethical or even unusual as some have suggested.

In fact, the Supreme Court quoted from a Nov. 15, 2005 statement from Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich. In it he makes claims that other senators had "relied on" when casting their votes on the amendment later that day. But that statement by Senator Levin was not spoken live either. It, too, was submitted as a written statement for the Record.

Just as Sen. Levin's written statement deserves due weight, so does the statement Senator Kyl and I introduced. As the principal authors of the law barring detainee lawsuits, we were entitled to comment on what we wrote, on why we thought it was necessary, and how we intended it to work.

Based on our research, we were very comfortable with our interpretation of the amendment. The statement submitted by us reflects our opinion about the intent of the amendment we authored, a fact Justice Antonin Scalia acknowledges and supports in his dissenting opinion.

Unfortunately, Justice Scalia's opinion was not shared by the majority of Supreme Court justices who abandoned centuries of precedent and ignored clear statutory language to achieve their desired result.

In any event, the Hamdan case has been decided.

I expect that Congress will act again this year to bar suits by al-Qaida detainees.

I plan to be in the thick of this legislative battle, along with my colleague, Jon Kyl. I look forward to working with him again and other Senators to ensure that al-Qaida's operatives are brought to justice.

Lindsey Graham, a Republican, represents South Carolina in the U.S. Senate.