YOU SHALL HAVE THE BODY > HABEAS CORPUS: Trump officials suggest suspending habeas corpus. . .Here’s what it means | Washington Post
Habeas
corpus, a Latin term meaning "you shall have the body," is a legal writ
that protects against unlawful imprisonment or detention.
> It allows an individual to challenge the legality of their confinement in court, ensuring due process.
> It's a cornerstone of American jurisprudence, rooted in English common law and enshrined in the US Constitution
Trump officials suggest suspending habeas corpus. Here’s what it means.
Habeas corpus, the right of an individual to challenge their detention in court, can only be suspended by Congress.
White
House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller speaks to reporters outside
the White House on Friday. (Tom Brenner/For The Washington Post)
CONTEXT: White
House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller has indicated that the Trump
administration is actively considering whether it can suspend habeas
corpus, the right of an individual to challenge their detention in
court.
According to the National Constitution Center, a nonprofit focused on constitutional education, habeas corpus has been suspended
four times since the Constitution was ratified.
Those suspensions took
place throughout the country ONLY during
the Civil War,
in several South
Carolina counties overrun by the Ku Klux Klan during Reconstruction,
in
two provinces of the Philippines during a 1905 insurrection,
On
Friday, Miller once again put the onus on the independent judicial
branch, suggesting that whether the administration will act to suspend
habeas corpus “depends on whether the courts do the right thing or not.”
However,
there’s “near-universal” legal consensus that only Congress can suspend
habeas corpus, “and that unilateral suspensions by the President are
per se unconstitutional,” Georgetown University Law Center professor
Steve Vladeck pointed out in his Substack newsletter.
Miller,
Vladeck added, is “suggesting that the administration would
(unlawfully) suspend habeas corpus if (but apparently only if) it
disagrees with how courts rule in these cases. In other words, it’s not
the judicial review itself that’s imperiling national security; it’s the
possibility that the government might lose. That’s not, and has never
been, a viable argument for suspending habeas corpus.”
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