Source: https://law.justia.com/constitution/us/article-2/12-martial-law-and-constitutional-limitations.html
Timestamp: 2018-03-19 20:05:21
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Matched Legal Cases: ['§ 2241', '§ 2241', '§ 2241', '§ 2241', '§ 1005', '§ 9', '§ 331']

Martial Law and Constitutional Limitations :: Article II. Executive Department :: US Constitution Annotated :: Justia
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Two theories of martial law are reﬂected in decisions of the Supreme Court. The first, which stems from the Petition of Right, 1628, provides that the common law knows no such thing as martial law;223 that is to say, martial law is not established by official authority of any sort, but arises from the nature of things, being the law of paramount necessity, leaving the civil courts to be the final judges of necessity.224 By the second theory, martial law can be validly and constitutionally established by supreme political authority in wartime. In the early years of the Supreme Court, the American judiciary embraced the latter theory as it held in Luther v. Borden225 that state declarations of martial law were conclusive and therefore not subject to judicial review.226 In this case, the Court found that the Rhode Island legislature had been within its rights in resorting to the rights and usages of war in combating insurrection in that state. The decision in the Prize Cases,227 although not dealing directly with the subject of martial law, gave national scope to the same general principle in 1863.
Early in the 20th century, however, the Court appeared to retreat from its stand in Milligan insofar as it held in Moyer v. Peabody231 that “the Governor’s declaration that a state of insurrection existed is conclusive of that fact. . . . [T]he plaintiff’s position is that he has been deprived of his liberty without due process of law. But it is familiar that what is due process of law depends on circumstances. . . . So long as such arrests are made in good faith and in honest belief that they are needed in order to head the insurrection off, the Governor is the final judge and cannot be subjected to an action after he is out of office on the ground that he had not reasonable ground for his belief.”232 The “good faith” test of Moyer, however, was superseded by the “direct relation” test of Sterling v. Constantin,233 where the Court made it very clear that “[i]t does not follow . . . that every sort of action the Governor may take, no matter how justified by the exigency or subversive of private right and the jurisdiction of the courts, otherwise available, is conclusively supported by mere executive fiat. . . . What are the allowable limits of military discretion, and whether or not they have been overstepped in a particular case, are judicial questions.”234
Martial Law in Hawaii.—The question of the constitutional status of martial law was raised again in World War II by the proclamation of Governor Poindexter of Hawaii, on December 7, 1941, suspending the writ of habeas corpus and conferring on the local commanding General of the Army all his own powers as governor and also “all of the powers normally exercised by the judicial officers . . . of this territory . . . during the present emergency and until the danger of invasion is removed.” Two days later the Governor’s action was approved by President Roosevelt. The regime which the proclamation set up continued with certain abatements until October 24, 1944.
Articles of War: The Nazi Saboteurs.—In 1942 eight youths, seven Germans and one an American, all of whom had received training in sabotage in Berlin, were brought to this country aboard two German submarines and put ashore, one group on the Florida coast, the other on Long Island, with the idea that they would proceed forthwith to practice their art on American factories, military equipment, and installations. Making their way inland, the saboteurs were soon picked up by the FBI, some in New York, others in Chicago, and turned over to the Provost Marshal of the District of Columbia. On July 2, the President appointed a military commission to try them for violation of the laws of war, to wit: for not wearing fixed emblems to indicate their combatant status. In the midst of the trial, the accused petitioned the Supreme Court and the United States District Court for the District of Columbia for leave to bring habeas corpus proceedings. Their argument embraced the contentions: (1) that the offense charged against them was not known to the laws of the United States; (2) that it was not one arising in the land and naval forces; and (3) that the tribunal trying them had not been constituted in accordance with the requirements of the Articles of War.
The decision might well have rested on the ground that the Constitution is without restrictive force in wartime in a situation of this sort. The saboteurs were invaders; their penetration of the boundary of the country, projected from units of a hostile ﬂeet, was essentially a military operation, their capture was a continuation of that operation. Punishment of the saboteurs was therefore within the President’s purely martial powers as Commander in Chief. Moreover, seven of the petitioners were enemy aliens, and so, strictly speaking, without constitutional status. Even had they been civilians properly domiciled in the United States at the outbreak of the war, they would have been subject under the statutes to restraint and other disciplinary action by the President without appeals to the courts. In any event, the Court rejected the jurisdictional challenge by one of the saboteurs on the basis of his claim to U. S. citizenship, finding U. S. citizenship wholly irrelevant to the determination of whether a wartime captive is an “enemy belligerent” within the meaning of the law of war.243
Articles of War: World War II Crimes.—As a matter of fact, in General Yamashita’s case,244 which was brought after the termination of hostilities for alleged “war crimes,” the Court abandoned its restrictive conception altogether. In the words of Justice Rutledge’s dissenting opinion in this case: “The difference between the Court’s view of this proceeding and my own comes down in the end to the view, on the one hand, that there is no law restrictive upon these proceedings other than whatever rules and regulations may be prescribed for their government by the executive authority or the military and, on the other hand, that the provisions of the Articles of War, of the Geneva Convention and the Fifth Amendment apply.”245 And the adherence of the United States to the Charter of London in August 1945, under which the Nazi leaders were brought to trial, is explicable by the same theory. These individuals were charged with the crime of instigating aggressive war, which at the time of its commission was not a crime either under international law or under the laws of the prosecuting governments. It must be presumed that the President is not in his capacity as Supreme Commander bound by the prohibition in the Constitution of ex post facto laws, nor does international law forbid ex post facto laws.246
Articles of War: Response to the Attacks of September 11, 2001.—In response to the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on New York City’s World Trade Center and the Pentagon in Washington, D. C. , Congress passed the “Authorization for Use of Military Force,”247 which provided that the President may use “all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations, or persons he determines planned, authorized, committed or aided the terrorist attacks [or] harbored such organizations or persons.” During a military action in Afghanistan pursuant to this authorization, a United States citizen, Yaser Hamdi, was taken prisoner. The Executive Branch argued that it had plenary authority under Article II to hold such an “enemy combatant” for the duration of hostilities, and to deny him meaningful recourse to the federal courts. In Hamdi v. Rumsfeld, the Court agreed that the President was authorized to detain a United States citizen seized in Afghanistan, although a majority of the Court appeared to reject the notion that such power was inherent in the Presidency, relying instead on statutory grounds.248 However, the Court did find that the government may not detain the petitioner indefinitely for purposes of interrogation, and must afford him the opportunity to offer evidence that he is not an enemy combatant.249
Martial Law and Domestic Disorder.—President Washington himself took command of state militia called into federal service to quell the Whiskey Rebellion, but there were not too many occasions subsequently in which federal troops or state militia called into federal service were required.260 Since World War II, however, the President, by virtue of his own powers and the authority vested in him by Congress,261 has used federal troops on a number of occasions, five of them involving resistance to desegregation decrees in the South.262 In 1957, Governor Faubus employed the Arkansas National Guard to resist court-ordered desegregation in Little Rock, and President Eisenhower dispatched federal soldiers and brought the Guard under federal authority.263 In 1962, President Kennedy dispatched federal troops to Oxford, Mississippi, when federal marshals were unable to control with rioting that broke out upon the admission of an African American student to the University of Mississippi.264 In June and September of 1964, President Johnson sent troops into Alabama to enforce court decrees opening schools to blacks.265 And, in 1965, the President used federal troops and federalized local Guardsmen to protect participants in a civil rights march. The President justified his action on the ground that there was a substantial likelihood of domestic violence because state authorities were refusing to protect the marchers.266
223 C. Fairman, The Law Of Martial Rule 20–22 (1930); A. Dicey, Introduction To The Study Of The Law Of The Constitution 283, 290 (5th ed. 1923).
224 Id. at 539–44.
225 48 U.S. (7 How.) 1 (1849). See also Martin v. Mott, 25 U.S. (12 Wheat.) 19, 32–33 (1827).
226 48 U.S. (7 How.) at 45.
227 67 U.S. (2 Bl.) 635 (1863).
228 Ex parte Milligan, 71 U.S. (4 Wall.) 2 (1866).
229 71 U.S. at 127.
230 71 U.S. at 139–40. In Ex parte Vallandigham, 68 U.S. (1 Wall.) 243 (1864), the Court had held, while war was still ﬂagrant, that it had no power to review by certiorari the proceedings of a military commission ordered by a general officer of the Army, commanding a military department.
231 212 U.S. 78 (1909).
232 212 U.S. at 83–85.
233 287 U.S. 378 (1932). “The nature of the power also necessarily implies that there is a permitted range of honest judgment as to the measures to be taken in meeting force with force, in suppressing violence and restoring order, for without such liberty to make immediate decision, the power itself would be useless. Such measures, conceived in good faith, in the face of the emergency and directly related to the quelling of the disorder or the prevention of its continuance, fall within the discretion of the Executive in the exercise of his authority to maintain peace.” Id. at 399–400.
234 287 U.S. at 400–01. This holding has been ignored by states on numerous occasions. E.g., Allen v. Oklahoma City, 175 Okla. 421, 52 P.2d 1054 (1935); Hearon v. Calus, 178 S.C. 381, 183 S.E. 13 (1935); and Joyner v. Browning, 30 F. Supp. 512 (W.D. Tenn. 1939).
235 31 Stat. 141, 153 (1900).
236 Duncan v. Kahanamoku, 327 U.S. 304 (1946).
237 327 U.S. at 324.
238 327 U.S. at 336.
239 327 U.S. at 343.
240 Ex parte Quirin, 317 U.S. 1, 29–30, 35 (1942).
241 317 U.S. at 41–42.
242 317 U.S. at 28–29.
243 Ex parte Quirin, 317 U.S. 1, 37–38 (1942) (“Citizens who associate themselves with the military arm of the enemy government, and with its aid, guidance and direction enter this country bent on hostile acts, are enemy belligerents within the meaning of the Hague Convention and the law of war.”). See also Colepaugh v. Looney, 235 F.2d 429, 432 (10th Cir. 1956), cert. denied, 352 U.S. 1014 (1957) (“[T]he petitioner’s citizenship in the United States does not . . . confer upon him any constitutional rights not accorded any other belligerent under the laws of war.”).
244 In re Yamashita, 327 U.S. 1 (1946).
245 327 U.S. at 81.
246 See Gross, The Criminality of Aggressive War, 41 Am. Pol. Sci. Rev. 205 (1947).
247 Pub. L. 107–40, 115 Stat. 224 (2001).
248 542 U.S. 507 (2004). There was no opinion of the Court. Justice O’Connor, joined by Chief Justice Rehnquist, Justice Kennedy and Justice Breyer, avoided ruling on the Executive Branch argument that such detentions could be authorized by its Article II powers alone, and relied instead on the “Authorization for Use of Military Force” passed by Congress. Justice Thomas also found that the Executive Branch had the power to detain the petitioner, although his dissenting opinion found that such detentions were authorized by Article II. Justice Souter, joined by Justice Ginsberg, rejected the argument that the Congress had authorized such detentions, while Justice Scalia, joined with Justice Stevens, denied that such congressional authorization was possible without a suspension of the writ of habeas corpus.
249 At a minimum, the petitioner must be given notice of the asserted factual basis for holding him, must be given a fair chance to rebut that evidence before a neutral decisionmaker, and must be allowed to consult an attorney. 542 U.S. at 533, 539.
250 542 U.S. 466 (2004).
251 Johnson v. Eisentrager, 339 U.S. 763, 789 (1950).
252 The petitioners were Australians and Kuwaitis.
253 Rasul v. Bush, 542 U.S. at 467.
254 The Court found that 28 U.S.C. § 2241, which had previously been construed to require the presence of a petitioner in a district court’s jurisdiction, was now satisfied by the presence of a jailor-custodian. See Braden v. 30th Judicial Circuit Court, 410 U.S. 484 (1973). Another “enemy combatant” case, this one involving an American citizen arrested on American soil, was remanded after the Court found that a federal court’s habeas jurisdiction under 28 U.S.C. § 2241 was limited to jurisdiction over the immediate custodian of a petitioner. Rumsfeld v. Padilla, 542 U.S. 426 (2004) (federal court’s jurisdiction over Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld not sufficient to satisfy presence requirement under 28 U.S.C. § 2241). In Munaf v. Geren, 128 S. Ct. 2207 (2008), the Court held that the federal habeas statute, 28 U.S.C. § 2241, applied to American citizens held by the Multinational Force—Iraq, an international coalition force operating in Iraq and composed of 26 different nations, including the United States. The Court concluded that the habeas statute extends to American citizens held overseas by American forces operating subject to an American chain of command, even when those forces are acting as part of a multinational coalition.
255 Detainee Treatment Act of 2005, Pub. L. 109–148, § 1005(e)(1) (providing that “no court . . . shall have jurisdiction to hear or consider . . . an application for a writ of habeas corpus filed by . . . an alien detained . . . at Guantanamo Bay”). After the Court decided, in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld, 548 U.S. 557 (2006), that this language of the Detainee Treatment Act did not apply to detainees whose cases were pending at the time of enactment, the language was amended by the Military Commissions Act of 2006, Pub. L. 109–366, to also apply to pending cases where a detainee had been determined to be an enemy combatant.
256 553 U.S. 723 (2008).
257 U.S. Const. Art. I, § 9, cl. 2 provides: “The Privilege of the Writ of Habeas Corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in Cases of Rebellion or Invasion the public Safety may require it.” In Boumediene, the government argued only that the Suspension Clause did not apply to the detainees; it did not argue that Congress had acted to suspend habeas.
258 “[G]iven the unique status of Guantanamo Bay and the particular dangers of terrorism in the modern age, the common-law courts simply may not have confronted cases with close parallels to this one. We decline, therefore, to infer too much, one way or the other, from the lack of historical evidence on this point.” 553 U.S. at 752.
259 553 U.S. at 764. “[Q]uestions of extraterritoriality turn on objective factors and practical concerns, not formalism.” Id.
260 United States Adjutant-General, Federal Aid in Domestic Disturbances 1787– 1903, S. Doc. No. 209, 57th Congress, 2d sess. (1903); Pollitt, Presidential Use of Troops to Enforce Federal Laws: A Brief History, 36 N.C. L. REV. 117 (1958). United States Marshals were also used on approximately 30 occasions. United States Commission on Civil Rights, Law Enforcement: A Report on Equal Protection in the South (Washington: 1965), 155–159.
261 10 U.S.C. §§ 331–334, 3500, 8500, deriving from laws of 1795, 1 Stat. 424; 1861, 12 Stat. 281; and 1871, 17 Stat. 14.
262 The other instances were in domestic disturbances at the request of state governors.
263 Proc. No. 3204, 22 Fed. Reg. 7628 (1957); E.O. 10730, 22 Fed. Reg. 7628. See 41 Ops. Atty. Gen. 313 (1957); see also, Cooper v. Aaron, 358 U.S. 1 (1958); Aaron v. McKinley, 173 F. Supp. 944 (E.D. Ark. 1959), aff’d sub nom Faubus v. Aaron, 361 U.S. 197 (1959); Faubus v. United States, 254 F.2d 797 (8th Cir. 1958), cert. denied, 358 U.S. 829 (1958).
264 Proc. No. 3497, 27 Fed. Reg. 9681 (1962); E.O. 11053, 27 Fed. Reg. 9693 (1962). See United States v. Barnett, 346 F.2d 99 (5th Cir. 1965).
265 Proc. 3542, 28 Fed. Reg. 5707 (1963); E.O. 11111, 28 Fed. Reg. 5709 (1963); Proc. No. 3554, 28 Fed. Reg. 9861; E.O. 11118, 28 Fed. Reg. 9863 (1963). See Alabama v. United States, 373 U.S. 545 (1963).
266 Proc. No. 3645, 30 Fed. Reg. 3739 (1965); E.O. 11207, 30 Fed. Reg. 2743 (1965). See Williams v. Wallace, 240 F. Supp. 100 (M.D. Ala. 1965).
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