"They that give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
Benjamin Franklin

"Are all the laws, but one, to go unexecuted, and the government itself to go to pieces, lest that one be violated?"
Pres. Abraham Lincoln

 

Course Website

Judith L. Holmes, J.D., Ph.D.
Office: 108 Gordon Hall
Office Hours: Tuesday, 4-5; Wednesday, 1-2:30
Phone: 413-545-2305
email: jholmes@legal.umass.edu

When the executive branch of government faces the daunting task of going to war to defend the nation, it will take whatever steps it deems necessary to win. Curtailing civil liberties is often one of the first steps. During the Civil War, President Abraham Lincoln suspended the writ of habeas corpus and tried suspected sabateurs in military courts. During World War I, President Woodrow Wilson locked up protestors who handed out anti-war leaflets and summarily deported hundreds of immigrants without due process. During World War II, President Franklin Roosevelt locked up 120,000 Japanese Americans and tried enemy spies in military courts. All these actions were challenged in court on the grounds that they violated the constitution, but each one was upheld by the Supreme Court which has been unwilling to question assertions of military necessity during wartime. With hindsight, we can see that some of these measures went too far and resulted in unconstitutional deprivation of liberty. In 1988, for instance, Congress declared that the Japanese internment had been wrong.

Immediately following the attacks on September 11, 2001, President Bush declared war on terrorism. In an effort to win that war, his administration persuaded Congress to pass the far-reaching USA Patriot Act, detained and deported an unknown number of Muslim immigrants living in the U.S., and is detaining hundreds (thousands?) of suspected enemy combatants in military bases for an unspecified period of time.

Our task in this course is to examine the current war on terrorism and its impact on civil liberties with the benefit of the historical record. Will future generations come to see the current measures as going too far or as a minimal deprivation of liberty necessary to defend the nation? Are courts equipped to rule on the executive branch’s justification of military necessity? Is there a long term impact on a democracy when civil liberties are curtailed? Can we devise a system that gives the executive branch the necessary power to fight terorism while protecting civil liberties?