Charles Krauthammer: Emergency Over, Saith the Court Contributed by Bill Faith
1861. 1941. 2001. Our big wars -- and the war on terrorism ranks with the
big ones -- have a way of starting in the first year of a decade. Supreme
Courts, which historically have been loath to intervene against presidential
war powers in the midst of conflict, have tended to give the president until
mid-decade to do what he wishes to the Constitution in order to win the war.
During the Civil War, Abraham Lincoln suspended the writ of habeas corpus --
trashing the Bill of Rights or exercising necessary emergency executive
power, depending on your point of view. But he got the whole troublesome
business done by 1865, and the Supreme Court stayed away.
During World War II, Franklin Roosevelt interned Japanese Americans. He,
too, was left unmolested by the court. But Roosevelt also got his war
wrapped up by 1945. Had the current war on terrorism followed course and
ended in 2005, the sensational, just-decided Hamdan v. Rumsfeld
case concerning military tribunals for Guantanamo Bay prisoners would have
either been rendered moot or drawn a yawn.
But, of course, the war on terrorism is different. ...
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Contributed by Bill Faith on July 7, 2006 at 05:17 AM in , , |