June 23, 2002
Dark Days in America
The Bush administration rolls rights back to before "The Great Writ" of Habeus Corpus
According to Jerry Brito, the editor of the CATO Institute's Daily Journal, Habeus Corpus is in danger.This Libertarian publication expresses alarm at the Bush administration's rapid destruction of the civil liberties that are at the heart of the American Dream.
Habeus Corpus is the principle "which allows Americans to get into a court of law to challenge the legality of their arrest and to have their liberty restored if the court agrees that the arrest was unlawful," Brito says. "Without judicial review, the police can arrest people without warrants and jail people without trials."
Timothy Lynch, director of the Cato Institute's Project on Criminal Justice, spells it out in clear terms: the Bush administration now asserts that "(a) citizens can be taken into custody as enemy combatants; (b) that, beyond such battlefield detainees, citizens can also be taken off the streets of any American town; and (c) that civilian courts cannot intervene to inquire into the legality of such arrests and detentions."
"The bottom line," Lynch says, "is that President Bush and Attorney General Ashcroft are attempting to suspend the 'Great Writ' of habeas corpus, which allows Americans to get into a court of law to challenge the legality of their arrest and to have their liberty restored if the court agrees that the arrest was unlawful. Without judicial review, the police can arrest people without warrants and jail people without trials."
Will Americans sit back and quietly let the foundations of American justice, which so many have died to establish, be taken away by the Bush administration?
-- By David Cogswell