A Legal Manual for an Apocalyptic New York

New York Times ^ | February 14, 2011 | WILLIAM GLABERSON

[Second Amendment First]

Major disasters like terrorist attacks and mass epidemics raise confounding issues for rescuers, doctors and government officials. But they also pose bewildering legal questions, including some that may be painful to consider, like how the courts would decide who gets life-saving medicine if there are more victims than supplies.

But courts, like fire departments and homicide detectives, exist in part for gruesome what-ifs. So this month, an official state legal manual was published in New York to serve as a guide for judges and lawyers who could face grim questions in another terrorist attack, a major radiological or chemical contamination or a widespread epidemic.

Quarantines. The closing of businesses. Mass evacuations, warrantless searches of homes. The slaughter of infected animals and the seizing of property. When laws can be suspended and whether infectious people can be isolated against their will or subjected to mandatory treatment. It is all there, in dry legalese, in the manual, published by the state court system and the state bar association.

The most startling legal realities are handled with lawyerly understatement. It notes that the government has broad power to declare a state of emergency. “Once having done so,” it continues, “local authorities may establish curfews, quarantine wide areas, close businesses, restrict public assemblies and, under certain circumstances, suspend local ordinances.”

[patton]

I lived there for a nbumber of years as a kid - my dad was at Columbia. We lived in the university housing.

[longtermmemmory]

whoever wrote this has cranial rectal insertion syndrome.

What about the court staffers?

From what I have seen of judges, the courts will be closed asap.

The union staffers will be home.

the armed security will be elsewhere.

Law suspended? no need for judges or lawyers, there is no law just dictatorship.