No. Congress is banned from passing Ex Post Facto laws by the Constitution. Try again.
No. Congress is banned from passing Ex Post Facto laws by the Constitution. Try again.
Well, they sure passed something. They agreed with General Jackson. There was no telegraph. He had to act. He did act.
This was interesting:
"You [this is from a newsgroup] cited Roger B.Taney's ringing denunciation of Lincoln for usurping a congressional power, based on the particular placement of the habeas corpus suspension clause within the Constitution. Two years earlier, in the famous case of ABLEMAN v BOOTH, Taney had written, "in the judgment of this court, the act of Congress commonly called the fugitive slave law is, in all of its provisions, fully authorized by the Constitution of the United States." I was wondering whether you find it as curious as I do that what Taney found to be a definitive criterion (placement of text within the Constitution) in 1861 was apparently not even on his radar screen in 1859.
It seems to me that if Taney's position in 1861 was unquestionably correct, then the Fugitive Slave Law was unquestionably unconstitutional. Or, if the Fugitive Slave Law was "fully authorized by the Constitution of the United States" as Taney had contended in 1859, then the Supreme Court was on record as saying that the placement of text within the body of the Constitution was not absolutely definitive in terms of who was assigned a particular power -- a point that Taney might have taken into account in 1861. So how about it: Fugitive Slave Law, constitutional, or unconstitutional?"
Walt