Habeas Corpus Act Quotes

Few would argue against safe-guarding the nation. But in the judgment of at least one of the country's most distinguished presidential scholars, the legal steps taken by the Bush Administration in its war against terrorism were a quantum leap beyond earlier blots on the country's history and traditions: more significant than John Adams' Alien and Sedition Acts, than Lincoln's suspension of habeas corpus during the Civil War, than the imprisonment of Americans of Japanese descent during World War II. Collectively, Arthur Schlesinger Jr. argued, the Bush Administration's extralegal counter-terrorism program presented the most dramatic, sustained, and radical challenge to the rule of law in American history.

We have been stripped of due process and habeas corpus and run the largest prison system in the world. Police are militarized and authorized to kill unarmed citizens, especially poor people of color, with impunity. The 1878 Posse Comitatus Act, which once prohibited the military from acting as a domestic police force, was overturned with the passing of Section 1021 of the National Defense Authorization Act. Section 1021 permits the state to carry out “extraordinary rendition”95 on the streets of American cities and hold citizens indefinitely in military detention centers without due process—in essence disappearing them as in any totalitarian state. The executive branch of government can assassinate U.S. citizens.96 Corporate loyalists in the courts treat corporations as people and people as noisome impediments to corporate profit.

Hawkesbury told Otto repeatedly that Britain could do nothing to curtail ‘the liberty of the press as secured by the constitution of this country’, but Otto pointed out that under the 1793 Alien Act there were provisions for the deportation of seditious foreign writers such as Peltier.49 Talleyrand added that far from being immutable, the British constitution was unwritten and even habeas corpus had been suspended at various moments during the Revolutionary Wars. It has been alleged that Napoleon was too authoritarian to understand the concept of freedom of the press; in fact the question was not simply one of freedom or repression, since there were ‘ministerial’ papers which were owned by members of the government, and the prime minister’s own brother, Hiley Addington, even wrote articles for them. He also knew that London had been the place of publication of equally vicious libelles against Louis XV and Louis XVI written by disaffected Frenchmen.50 The diatribes of

the Ku Klux Klan Act. He had planned a California trip that spring, but canceled it in the belief that he couldn’t sidestep this historic moment. The strong new measure laid down criminal penalties for depriving citizens of their rights under the Fourteenth Amendment, including holding office, sitting on a jury, or casting a vote. The federal government could prosecute such cases when state governments refused to act. The law also endowed Grant with extraordinary powers to suspend habeas corpus, declare martial law, and send in troops. To halt night riders, the act made it illegal “to conspire together, or go in disguise upon the public highway . . . for the purpose . . . of depriving any person . . . of equal protection of the law.

Federal law enforcement officials, even in free states, were required to arrest fugitive slaves and anyone who assisted them and threatened with punishment if they failed to enforce the measure: “Any marshal or deputy marshal refuse to receive such warrant, or other process, when tendered, or to use all proper means diligently to execute the same, he shall, on conviction thereof, be fined in the sum of one thousand dollars.”41 The act nullified state laws and forced citizens and local officials to apprehend escaped slaves regardless of their convictions, religious views, or state or local laws and compelled citizens in free states to “aid and assist in the prompt and efficient execution of this law, whenever their services may be required.”42 Penalties were harsh and the financial incentives for compliance attractive. “Anyone caught providing food and shelter to an escaped slave, assuming northern whites could discern who was a runaway, would be subject to a fine of one thousand dollars and six months in prison. The law also suspended habeas corpus and the right to trial by jury for captured blacks.

But faced with opposition to antiterrorism legislation that not only gives the attorney general the power to use the armed services against the civilian population, neatly nullifying the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878, it also, selectively, suspends habeas corpus, the heart of Anglo-American liberty. Clinton attacked his critics as “unpatriotic.” Then, wrapped in the flag, he spoke from the throne: “There is nothing patriotic about our pretending that you can love your country but despise your government.” This is breathtaking since it includes, at one time or another, most of us.

Lincoln’s most controversial act was authorizing General Scott to suspend the writ of habeas corpus, thus allowing the government to arrest and detain persons without charges.

General Anderson, the military dictator of Kentucky, announces in one of his proclamations that he will arrest no one who does not act, write, or speak in opposition to Mr. Lincoln's Government. It would have completed the idea if he had added, or think in opposition to it. Look at the condition of our State under the rule of our new protectors. They have suppressed the freedom of speech and of the press. They seize people by military force upon mere suspicion, and impose on them oaths unknown to the laws. Other citizens they imprison without warrant, and carry them out of the State, so that the writ of habeas corpus can not reach them.

In Boumediene v. Bush, the Supreme Court held that the United States’ exercise of authority over Guantánamo gave the detainees a constitutional right to bring their habeas corpus claims in federal district courts. The Court also held that the procedures authorized under the Military Commissions Act, which called for military tribunals to look into the detention of the Guantánamo detainees, were not an adequate substitute for habeas. As the Court explained, “[t]he laws and Constitution are designed to survive, and remain in force, even in extraordinary times. Liberty and security can be reconciled; and in our system, they are reconciled within the framework of the law.”17

Venting his anger a few months later, Waldo wrote: “The word liberty in the mouth of Mr. Webster sounds like the word love in the mouth of a courtezan.” Yet his shock at Webster’s treachery paled beside his reaction to the Fugitive Slave Act, a key provision of the Compromise of 1850. Americans in free states were already obliged by law to return runaway slaves to their owners. This squalid obligation had been forced into the constitution, a logrolling sop to the South that carefully avoided the word slave. The mealymouthed clause merely noted that any “person held to service or labour” with the gall to flee to another state must be promptly restored to “the party to whom such service or labour may be due.” Still, this provision had been slackly enforced. Many free states approached it with foot-dragging indifference. Many, too, passed what came to be known as personal liberty laws, which granted runaways the right to a trial by jury, habeas corpus, and other judicial protections. The time and money involved in such trials enraged slaveowners. Meanwhile, fugitives frequently took the opportunity to slip over the state line while the legal gears were grinding away. The new statute was an attempt to close all such loopholes. Now U.S. marshals and their deputies were obliged to assist in the return of runaways. Any officer who declined to carry out this task would be fined a thousand dollars—a high price for a fit of conscience. There would be no more trials, no more running out the clock. Also, the costs of rounding up fugitives would be paid by the national government, essentially federalizing the whole operation: the United States had transformed state-sponsored kidnappings into official policy. Last but not least—especially in the eyes of an agonized Waldo—the law made all Americans into its accomplices. It was now a serious crime to harbor runaways or obstruct their capture. In fact, a federal marshal could literally deputize any person on the spot: a kind of magic trick, turning ordinary citizens into snitches, quislings, enforcers. This was the last straw for Waldo.