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To: rustbucket
The matter (habeas corpus) had not come before the full court (except perhaps under Marshall)

Habeas corpus definately came before the full court under Marshall. The case was Ex Parte Bollman and Swartwout. Bollman and Swartwout were two Aaron Burr associates who were arrested in New Orleans for their involvement in the 1807 Burr-Wilkinson conspiracy. The case arose out of the activities of Wilkinson in New Orleans, who blocked delivery of a territorial Federal Judge's habeas corpus writ to Swartwout just long enough to get him on a transport ship to Washington, D.C. for trial. Wilkinson was arguing that the danger to New Orleans posed by Burr's loyalists required him to arrest conspirators without the writ. Marshall found that the writ had not been properly suspended though, and ruled that the Supreme Court had to grant it to the two prisoners.

It's a very important early supreme court case because it has defined how habeas corpus applies ever since. Unfortunately our dumbass Attorney General Alberto Gonzales has apparently never read it, which is why the Bush administration keeps getting slapped down in court over Gitmo. And it's not that they're doing anything wrong either - they're just making the wrong legal arguments and erroniously designating the prisoners with the cloak of civilian rights to conform to their misguided legal arguments. If they followed Ex Parte Bollman and the similarly important Ex Parte Milligan from 1866, instead of the highly flawed Ex Parte Quirin from 1941, they could detain the Gitmo thugs as booked POW's and war criminals long as they wanted and the leftist whiners couldn't do a damn thing about it.

364 posted on 04/13/2007 7:12:48 PM PDT by lqclamar ("That's it, Seth, you can't blame them. It's want of education. That's all it is.")
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To: lqclamar
Habeas corpus definately came before the full court under Marshall. The case was Ex Parte Bollman and Swartwout.

And in that case who had suspended habeas corpus, Congress or the President?

375 posted on 04/14/2007 4:16:29 AM PDT by Non-Sequitur (Save Fredericksburg. Support CVBT.)
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