Yesterday I was at a very nice picnic at Elks Lodge, sponsored by the Republican Party of Dover. Several candidates spoke: three gubernatorial hopefuls, Testerman, Riley, and Acciard; two senatorial hopefuls, Vikram and Bolduc; and three Congressional hopefuls, Prescott, Huff Brown, and myself.
The following is a summary of my presentation:
When will we get martial law? As you saw during the Canadian truckers’ convoy, Mr. Trudeau imposed whatever “law” he wanted, including ways to freeze the donations properly sent by citizens. Can it happen here?
New Hampshire’s state Constitution emphatically states, in Article 34: “No, ain’t gonna have martial law in this state. Forget it.” [not exact quote]. But New Hampshire’s stance won’t hold back the feds from doing it.
We want to thank Mary Maxwell for this Op-Ed. Please direct yours to Editor@GraniteGrok.com.
What feds? Can Biden impose martial law? What does the parchment say? The parchment never uses the word “martial law.” But it does give Congress — and only Congress — the power to suspend habeas corpus. That would have the effect of taking away your legal rights, there would be no court to listen to you.
Have we already seen martial law in the US?
In 1786, before the Constitutional Convention was called, there was a rebellion in Springfield, Massachusetts, led by Shay, a veteran of the Revolutionary war. It had to do with debts. He set out to seize the armory but was defeated by a militia. This influenced the Framers. Their final wording in Article I, Section 9 of the parchment is: ” 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.”
(Note: the fact that it appears in Article I, which is the Legislature’s article and not in the President’s job description in Article II, tells us that the suspension of habeas corpus would need to be made by Congress.)
James Madison’s notes show two objectors. Mr. Pinckney of South Carolina moved that habeas should not be suspended but on the most urgent occasions, & then only for a limited time not exceeding twelve months.” Mr. Rutledge, also of South Carolina, “was for declaring the Habeas Corpus inviolable— He did (not) conceive that a suspension could ever be necessary at the same time through all the States.”
In 1814 there was a declaration of martial law in New Orleans by General Jackson during the War of 1812 against the British. It was a complicated situation for which Jackson eventually paid a contempt of court fee. But that was in a separate action, so does not furnish jurisprudence on the legality of martial law.
The main case, luckily, has to do with internment, that is, herding people into camps. I have heard that FEMA camps have been built secretly on American soil, and I can tell you that camps exist in Australia, where I used to live. They are not secret; they were openly used during Covid as a sort of quarantine thing. Can you be interned here in the US?
In 1942, President FDR wanted to intern Japanese Americans, including about 100,000 who had US citizenship. Families in the three west coast states were herded into these camps.
It’s important to note that FDR was not a sloppy, kinda guy. He did write to Congress and get their permission to suspend habeas, per Article I, sec 9. He then added more: his Executive Order 9066 says, “I hereby further authorize and direct the Secretary of War and the said Military Commanders to take such other steps as [they] may deem advisable to enforce compliance.” Wow. It’s blank check city, Man.
One Japanese man arrested for breaking FDR’s curfew was Fred Korematsu. In 1984, his case was re-opened, and Judge Marilyn Patel in California acquitted him. But NOT because there was anything wrong with the martial law, just something wrong in Korematsu’s personal case. She even said that “the original precedent still holds.”
Just so’s you’ll know, if we get in trouble today, THERE IS NOTHING IN WRITING TO PROTECT US against martial law — no Supreme Court refutation and no Congressional fussing. Granted, in 1948, Congress saw the wrongness of the US seizing the property of the Japanese Americans and gave them compensation, and in 1990 paid $20,000 to each of the sufferers.
You may be laughing at me for suggesting that a piece of paper could help. Well, I do feel that way. So I propose two ways to inhibit the use of martial law, short of a constitutional amendment. The first would be to pin down a legal definition of the words that Sec 9 says can justify a suspension of habeas corpus.
Recall the wording: “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.” We should pin down three words: rebellion, invasion, and public safety.
My other suggestion is that Congress get busy real quick on modifying the legislation it passed in 1976, called The National Emergencies Act. Stunningly it allows a president to declare an emergency and promises that Congress won’t intervene for 6 months.
This is unsupported by the Constitution. Why in the world, after seeing the opening salvo of a wrongful national emergency declaration, should Congress not intervene? After all, it wrote that law in the first place. [I think it’s a treasonous abdication by Congress of the People’s authority. I see a lot of treason on Capitol Hill, as described in my book Prosecution for Treason.]
I don’t mean to mix up the National Emergencies Act with martial law, they are not quite the same. In regard to emergencies, we are lucky this time to have the needed piece of paper — it’s called the Blaisdell case. In 1931, the US Supreme Court ruled in Home Building v Blaisdell, that emergency does not add any new power. And it does not — I quote — “remove or diminish the restrictions imposed upon power granted or reserved.”
Ah, back in the days when justices were justices.
Ah, back in the days when the words “Don’t remove constitutional restrictions on power” meant — wait for it — “Don’t remove constitutional restrictions on power.”
