Cutting the Cake for an Ancient Rule of Law (by Anthony D. Romero for HuffPost)

Anthony D. Romero
Cutting the Cake for an Ancient Rule of Law


I hope you brought candles. Habeas corpus is 792 years young today.

The habeas story began in England's Runnymede meadow on June 15, 1215, when dissident English nobles forced King John to sign the Magna Carta, a contract limiting the power of the king in exchange for his right to rule. John later rejected the charter, prompting a civil war, but the contract would become one of the greatest legal documents in history.

The Great Writ of habeas corpus was among the rights articulated that day, and it has since evolved into a principal safeguard against arbitrary executive detention here in the United States. Though the writ of habeas corpus has stood for nearly eight centuries, it rarely has faced a threat as acute as it faces now.

This bedrock constitutional right is under siege, along with many other fundamental American liberties and freedoms, all in the name of national security and the president's "commander-in-chief powers." The Bush administration would like us all to believe that the threat of terrorism warrants a wholesale reinterpretation of our system of laws:

They claim that victims of government torture should have the courthouse doors closed to them, at the sole discretion of the president. They assert that the government has the power to wiretap without warrants, at the sole discretion of the president. They believe that the government has the power to kidnap people and send them on secret flights in the dead of night to foreign countries known to torture, at the sole discretion of the president. And, they insist that the government has the power to detain people indefinitely -- in American prisons -- without charges or any due process, at, you guessed it, the sole discretion of the president.

The irony is that habeas corpus was born of war and conflict, not peace and harmony. It was forced upon a reluctant monarchy in response to an unpopular war and autocratic, arrogant rule. In short, habeas is the precedent that defines how a just society faces a crisis -- it is not an antiquated ideal from simpler times. ......(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/anthony-d-romero/cutting-the-cake-for-an-a_b_52309.html