SEATTLE (AP) - The Navy lawyer who led a successful U.S. Supreme Court challenge of the Bush administration's military tribunals for Guantanamo detainees has received a Distinguished Alumnus award from Seattle University Law School.

Lt. Cmdr. Charles Swift accepted the award at a dinner Thursday night and joined a panel that spoke to law students Friday. He told them he was frustrated that following his legal victory, Congress passed the Military Commissions Act. Signed by President Bush on Oct. 17, it strips U.S. courts of jurisdiction to hear the detainees' challenges to their indefinite detentions.

"We're right back where we started, despite the huge victory" in the case of Salim Hamdan, Swift told the students.

Hamdan was captured while fleeing the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan and is being held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Hamdan has acknowledged that Osama bin Laden paid him $200 a month as his driver on a Kandahar farm, but he says he never joined al-Qaida or engaged in military fighting.

Swift, appointed to represent him, took the case to the Supreme Court, which struck down Bush's plans for the tribunals.

"There's no allegation he ever carried a rifle against the U.S. or shot at anyone," Swift said.

"From the beginning, the administration maintained that a military commission was a full and fair trial. In it, they said a full and fair trial could be held without the accused actually being present ... that he didn't have the right to see evidence against him or her, that evidence could be put in that had been obtained by physical or mental coercion, that that evidence could be used to convict, that the accused did not have a right to represent themselves. And I said, 'There went the Bill of Rights."'

For his efforts, Swift was passed over for promotion shortly after the Supreme Court's ruling in June - meaning that he is being forced to retire next spring under the military's "up or out" promotion system. He has said he hopes to continue representing Hamdan, who is still being held at Guantanamo.

On Friday, Swift recalled visiting Hamdan's family in Yemen with a female colleague. The family's grandmother gathered all of the young girls - Hamdan's two daughters, plus several cousins - on the top floor of the home, telling them the woman had studied hard to become a lawyer. If they studied hard, the grandmother said, they could become anything they wanted.

"She is the single most dangerous weapon against Osama bin Laden there is in the world," Swift said. "He fears her more than any bomb.

"It is the rule of law, and that promise, that beat the Soviet Union," Swift said. "It will beat al-Qaida. It will beat back fundamentalism every time, because the world wants to be free."