Ashcroft Proposed Suspending Habeas Corpus
Via Atrios, former Court TV and Brill's Content CEO Steven Brill has written a book, After: How America Confronted the Sept. 12 Era : "From his sweeping new book on how America responded to September 11, Steven Brill follows Attorney General John Ashcroft through the creation of the controversial USA Patriot Act." Brill writes,
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Most shocking was that the bill suspended what was known in the law as habeas corpus—which gave anyone detained on American soil the right to demand a court hearing to challenge the authority of those holding them. Lincoln had suspended habeas corpus for a time during the Civil War. Now Ashcroft was proposing that it just plain be eliminated during this undefined emergency that had no designated end date. What was going on at Justice, the conservative Republican [Sensenbrenner] from Wisconsin wondered. (Ashcroft says he cannot “reconstruct with any accuracy” whether the suspension of habeas corpus was proposed. Sensenbrenner’s recollection, as well as that of two White House officials who saw the draft, seems credible.)Yale Constitutional Law Professor and blogger Jack Balkin explains what this means. It's not good. After: How America Confronted the Sept. 12 Era by Steven Brill
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