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To: GOPcapitalist
"Lincoln obstructed them from meeting by placing one of the judges under house arrest. In doing so he violated the separation of powers and ran roughshod over the judiciary himself."

They were meeting to hear an issue in which they had no jurisdiction. They were attempting to act as a rogue court. This is precisely why the Suspension Clause was proposed and exists.

Your reference to the case is fine. It is your credential-less interpretation of it that is suspect.

1,492 posted on 11/26/2004 11:54:15 PM PST by capitan_refugio
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To: capitan_refugio
They were meeting to hear an issue in which they had no jurisdiction.

You are affirming the consequent again. That, and you are also just plain wrong. The Supreme Court ruled in Ex Parte Bollman and Swartwout that the court's jurisdiction in habeas corpus comes from the Judicial Act of 1789. Therefore the ONLY way to remove the court's jurisdiction is to repeal, alter, or otherwise suspend the Judicial Act of 1789.

Furthermore, since you are making a jurisdictional argument about a federal court, you necessarily bring Article III, Sections 1 and 2 into play. They read:

"The judicial Power of the United States, shall be vested in one supreme Court, and in such inferior Courts as the Congress may from time to time ordain and establish."

and

"In all the other Cases before mentioned, the supreme Court shall have appellate Jurisdiction, both as to Law and Fact, with such Exceptions, and under such Regulations as the Congress shall make."

The short end of these clauses is to say that the federal court system gets its jurisdiction from Congress and Congress alone. Only Congress can "ordain and establish" the courts and only congress can make "such exceptions" and "such regulations" as to the judiciary's jurisdiction. Yet we know from 1861 that Congress never altered the judiciary's jurisdiction. Thus it is necessarily so that no jurisdiction was ever stripped from them in that year, making the Murphy case perfectly within the D.C. Circuit Court's realm of cases.

Your reference to the case is fine. It is your credential-less interpretation of it that is suspect.

If having absolutely no credentialed background or expertise in constitutional law is enough to make Harry Jaffa a "constitutional scholar" in your eyes, my coursework in constitutional law is more than good enough of as a credential to rebut him.

1,494 posted on 11/27/2004 12:15:45 AM PST by GOPcapitalist ("Marxism finds it easy to ally with Islamic zealotism" - Ludwig von Mises)
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To: capitan_refugio; GOPcapitalist
[cr] They were meeting to hear an issue in which they had no jurisdiction. They were attempting to act as a rogue court. This is precisely why the Suspension Clause was proposed and exists.

This is the new capitan_kerryfugio legal doctrine. The Executive decides whether the Judicial branch has jurisdiction. They enforce their legal opinion with soldiers and guns. Judges who defy the Executive are pistol-whipped off the bench and dragged away.

1,584 posted on 11/27/2004 1:55:22 PM PST by nolu chan
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To: capitan_refugio; GOPcapitalist; nolu chan
They were meeting to hear an issue in which they had no jurisdiction. They were attempting to act as a rogue court. This is precisely why the Suspension Clause was proposed and exists.

Utter buncombe, larded with sneers:

Your reference to the case is fine. It is your credential-less interpretation of it that is suspect.

In direct contradiction of your substanceless statement, herewith Justice Scalia, dissenting in Hamdi vs. Rumsfeld:

There are times when military exigency renders resort to the traditional criminal process impracticable. English law accommodated such exigencies by allowing legislative suspension of the writ of habeas corpus for brief periods. Blackstone explained:

“And yet sometimes, when the state is in real danger, even this [i.e., executive detention] may be a necessary measure. But the happiness of our constitution is, that it is not left to the executive power to determine when the danger of the state is so great, as to render this measure expedient. For the parliament only, or legislative power, whenever it sees proper, can authorize the crown, by suspending the habeas corpus act for a short and limited time, to imprison suspected persons without giving any reason for so doing… . In like manner this experiment ought only to be tried in case of extreme emergency; and in these the nation parts with it[s] liberty for a while, in order to preserve it for ever.” 1 Blackstone 132.

Where the Executive has not pursued the usual course of charge, committal, and conviction, it has historically secured the Legislature’s explicit approval of a suspension. In England, Parliament on numerous occasions passed temporary suspensions in times of threatened invasion or rebellion. E.g., 1 W. & M., c. 7 (1688) (threatened return of James II); 7 & 8 Will. 3, c. 11 (1696) (same); 17 Geo. 2, c. 6 (1744) (threatened French invasion); 19 Geo. 2, c. 1 (1746) (threatened rebellion in Scotland); 17 Geo. 3, c. 9 (1777) (the American Revolution). Not long after Massachusetts had adopted a clause in its constitution explicitly providing for habeas corpus, see Mass. Const. pt. 2, ch. 6, art. VII (1780), reprinted in 3 Federal and State Constitutions, Colonial Charters and Other Organic Laws 1888, 1910 (F. Thorpe ed. 1909), it suspended the writ in order to deal with Shay’s Rebellion, see Act for Suspending the Privilege of the Writ of Habeas Corpus, ch. 10, 1786 Mass. Acts 510.

Our Federal Constitution contains a provision explicitly permitting suspension, but limiting the situations in which it may be invoked: “The privilege of the Writ of Habeas Corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in Cases of Rebellion or Invasion the public Safety may require it.” Art. I, §9, cl. 2. Although this provision does not state that suspension must be effected by, or authorized by, a legislative act, it has been so understood, consistent with English practice and the Clause’s placement in Article I. See Ex parte Bollman, 4 Cranch 75, 101 (1807); Ex parte Merryman, 17 F. Cas. 144, 151—152 (CD Md. 1861) (Taney, C. J., rejecting Lincoln’s unauthorized suspension); 3 Story §1336, at 208—209. [Emphasis added -- "lg".]

The Suspension Clause was by design a safety valve, the Constitution’s only “express provision for exercise of extraordinary authority because of a crisis,” Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co. v. Sawyer, 343 U.S. 579, 650 (1952) (Jackson, J., concurring). Very early in the Nation’s history, President Jefferson unsuccessfully sought a suspension of habeas corpus to deal with Aaron Burr’s conspiracy to overthrow the Government. See 16 Annals of Congress 402—425 (1807). During the Civil War, Congress passed its first Act authorizing Executive suspension of the writ of habeas corpus, see Act of Mar. 3, 1863, 12 Stat. 755, to the relief of those many who thought President Lincoln’s unauthorized proclamations of suspension (e.g., Proclamation No. 1, 13 Stat. 730 (1862)) unconstitutional. Later Presidential proclamations of suspension relied upon the congressional authorization, e.g., Proclamation No. 7, 13 Stat. 734 (1863). During Reconstruction, Congress passed the Ku Klux Klan Act, which included a provision authorizing suspension of the writ, invoked by President Grant in quelling a rebellion in nine South Carolina counties. See Act of Apr. 20, 1871, ch. 22, §4, 17 Stat. 14; A Proclamation [of Oct. 17, 1871], 7 Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents 136—138 (J. Richardson ed. 1899) (hereinafter Messages and Papers); id., at 138—139.

Link: Hamdi vs. Rumsfeld, 2004.

You make stuff up, capitan, and you lie like a rug.

1,655 posted on 11/28/2004 6:20:58 AM PST by lentulusgracchus ("Whatever." -- sinkspur)
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