Posted on 05/23/2002 8:52:25 AM PDT by stainlessbanner
Not necessarily. Justices are political appointees. Laws and interpretation of laws are fashioned to suit the circumstances. The Constitution is not a living document, it is the bedrock on which this nation was founded. BTW, I happen to like Judge Rehnquist better than most.
Non-Sequitur is correct that the question has not been definitively answered by the Supreme Court. However, Chief Justice Taney makes a very convincing argument that the power to suspend habeas corpus resides in the Congress, not the President. To paraphrase Non-Sequitur, one would think that Chief Justice Taney would know what he was talking about, wouldn't you?
Scroll down the following site to find Chief Justice Taney's convincing argument: Chief Justice Taney's argument concerning habeas corpus which begins at:
TANEY, Circuit Justice.
The application in this case for a writ of habeas corpus is made to me under the 14th section of the judiciary act of 1789 [1 Stat. 81], which renders effectual for the citizen the constitutional privilege of the writ of habeas corpus. ....
Taney was no slouch.
Boy, you know, you're right about that. In retrospect, we would have been better off overall if the war hadn't happened. But, given that it had to happen, I'm at best ambivalent about whether I wish the South had succeeded in seceding, nevertheless...
In defense of Lee, his way of fighting was intended to offset Confederate losses in the West, to rouse failing morale, and to convince outsiders that the Confederacy had become a viable nation.
I don't fault Lee at all. He was a general, not a politician. This is one of the reasons the Constitution specifies that the military must be subordinate to the civilian power - one cannot expect military specialists to be capable of dealing with the political aspects of war. That was Davis' job, and *he* fumbled it badly, IMO.
[me] Lincoln, I assure you, could have said plenty...
[thee] Like what?
Like, endorsing explicitly the proposed Thirteenth Amendment idea during the campaign, and endorsing Popular Sovereignty below a certain latitude as part of the amendment, to allow the South a certain room to expand in (they hadn't run out of room yet in Texas, and there was still the Indian Territory on the horizon).
Anything Lincoln could have done to alleviate the correct (as it turns out) impression of the Southerners that he was mounting a jihad of total war with no compromises against them, would have gone a long way to defusing sectional tensions.
But my modest proposal assumes that your appreciation of Lincoln's intentions toward slavery in the South is correct, and that his statements during the campaign about limited objectives weren't just rhetoric.
Lincoln intended all along to free the slaves and give them the vote -- making them the masters of the South.
That isn't a point, it's a slander. What is the point of your slander, except to heap obloquy on a man who was called unwillingly to lead a nation in war?
Lincoln took a lot of expedient measures, too -- and he never had so great a provocation. Your typification of Jefferson Davis as a despot is an argument ad hominem, another in your series of "so's your old man" name-calling recriminations. It says nothing about the merits of the South's secession from the United States.
I thank you for the recitation of facts, but the facts as you propound them don't support your conclusion that Pickett's summary court and execution were "murder, pure and simple". It was Draconian, but it wasn't "murder".
Saw your posts, and just offhand, creating a dispositive distinction between "treason" and "raising insurrection" is mighty thin. These word quibbles need something to eat.
John Brown attacked a United States arsenal with a force of armed men and killed federal troops. Hooting because the word "treason" doesn't appear in the articles preferred against him doesn't strike me as a victory for truth and beauty.
Pardon my ignorance and my perplexity, but if the (proposed) 13th Amendment was indeed a Lincoln project, then why on God's green earth didn't he come out earlier, before Dixie walked?
I had read briefly in Donald's Lincoln about this amendment, but I was concentrating more on the period 1854-1860, when he was formulating his national platform and deciding what to do about the slavery conundrum.
I think it would pretty hard to be convinced that the power to suspend HC rested only in Congress.
Congress was not in session much of the year back in this time frame. I don't know, but it seems like Congress was only in session 3-4 months out of the year. Not much of an emergency power if you have to wait several months to invoke it.
I think the people of the day knew that this was not practical, and that is why the Congress refunded the fine that Andrew Jackson paid for suspending the Writ with interest. Jackson wasn't even president.
President Lincoln had all the precedent he needed to suspend the Writ.
Those that think otherwise are just torqued off about the outcome.
Walt
Your modest proposal also displays a lack of understanding of the history of the period. Lincoln couldn't endorse the 13th Amendment - it hadn't been proposed yet. The amendment was rushed through the Congress in February 1861 in an attempt to head off the southern rebellion. It would have been hard for Lincoln to campaign for something that hadn't been proposed yet. Lincoln couldn't have done anything to halt the spread of slavery in Texas since Texas was already a slave state and could promote slavery anywhere within her borders. In short, there was nothing that Lincoln could have done to prevent the southern actions except lose the election.
All this talk about the 13th amendment sure gives the lie to the idea that the war was fought over tariffs, doesn't it?
Walt
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