From: cyeomans@ms.uky.edu (Charles Yeomans)
Subject: Re: Godel and the US constitution
    <1992Sep02.134107.33391@watson.ibm.com> 
    <ARA.92Sep3053902@camelot.ai.mit.edu>
Date: Thu, 3 Sep 1992 15:45:20 GMT
Organization: University Of Kentucky, Dept. of Math Sciences

In article <ARA.92Sep3053902@camelot.ai.mit.edu> ara@zurich.ai.mit.edu (Allan Adler) writes:
>Maybe Lincoln got away with a lot of abuses of power, but that doesn't
>mean that they were consitutional or that they are now consitutional.
>For example, mention has been made of Lincoln suspending habeas corpus.
>During WWII there was a Supreme Court decision that the army did not
>have the right to suspend habeas corpin Hawaii even though it was
>under martial law.
>
The Constitution explicitly gives the president the power to suspend
habeas corpus when martial law has been declared.  But the army has no
such power unless the president himself calls for it.

>There are lots of examples of imperfect implementation of the constitution.
>For example, in around 1797, COngress passed the Alien and Sedition Acts,
>which were clearly unconstitutional (if you look at the debates, the
>first thing that happened after the bill was read was that someone asked
>that the bill of rights be read), but they passed it anyway and the
>supreme court never declared it unconstitutional. Instead, the bill
>had a built in expiration date of 1801, I think. It was passed while
>Adams was president and it was used by Federalists to put Republicans
>in jail.Adams' vice president was a Republican, namely Jefferson, even
>though Adams was a Federalist. After the Republicans won the election,
>they used the law to put Federalists in jail. The states Virginia
>and Kentucky both decided that the law was null and void in their
>borders, something that would again be regarded as unconstitutional,
>since for example states do not have the right to declare civil rights
>decisions and legislation null and void in their own states.
>
>But to return to my point, the real danger to the constitution is not
>the provisions it makes and the possible loopholes that could allow
>a dictatorship to come into being, but in the more real possibility
>that the provisions of the constitution will be ignored and interpreted
>out of existence. For example, we have freedom of speech. Now, there
>was during the debates on the Alien and Sedition Acts someone who got
>up and said that of course we have free speech but is freedom
>of speech the right to vilify and calumnize public officials, attributing
>to them the worst of motives and scandalous behavior? Well, he convinced
>his colleagues that it didn't. And now people will argue that freedom of
>the press does not mean the right to print porn. The Bush Administration
>during the recent Supreme Court case about prayer at the graduation in 
>Providence had its lawyers present briefs to the Court  arguing that the
>amendment "Congress shall make no law respecting the establishment of religion"
>did not mean the US could not have a state religion! These examples only

Ah, an interesting point.  It is indeed the case that the COnstitutionn
only restricts COngress from the establishment of religion - at least as
of the time of the Bill of Rights.  But the 14th amendment is generally 
interpreted as having incorporated many of these  rights.
>

Charles Yeomans
cyeomans@ms.uky.edu
yeomans@austin.onu.edu