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Civil Liberties, Habeas Corpus, and the War on Terror

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Civil Liberties, Habeas Corpus, and the War on Terror
Civil Liberties, Habeas Corpus, and the War on Terror
Jennifer Proctor
POL201: American National Government
Instructor: Luke Martin
10/29/12

Habeas Corpus has been around for very many years. Although no one knows its exact origin it still dates back pretty far. Habeas Corpus has been seen as a good thing and a bad thing. It has been around for every war we have had. It has also been suspended by two of our presidents in the past. The story and history of Habeas Corpus is a very old one but it is also a very interesting one too.

Habeas corpus, a Latin term meaning "you have the body," an important right granted to individuals in America and refers to the right of every prisoner to challenge the terms of his or her incarceration in court before a judge. Basically it means that a judicial mandate require that a prisoner be brought before the court to determine whether the government has the right to continue detaining them. The individual being held or a person representing them can petition the court for such a writ. The English history of Habeas Corpus is ancient. It clearly dates back to Magna Carta times in 1215, but its actual origin is still uncertain. Habeas Corpus was originally the order of the King and his courts but in the years passed became the right of the person being detained or someone acting on their behalf rather than the king and his courts. There is a quote from Magna Carta that states, ‘’no free man shall be taken or imprisoned or disseized or exiled or in any other way destroyed except by the lawful judgment of their peers or by the law of the land’’. Habeas Corpus was unknown to many civil law systems in Europe. European civil law system generally favored authority from the top down whereas Angelo-Saxon common law tends to favor the individual. The Angelo-Saxon common law comes from England. After the English Civil War and the beheading of King Charles I in 1649 is what led



References: http://usgovinfo.about.com/od/rightsandfreedoms/a/habeuscorpus.htm https://www.law.upenn.edu/journals/jil/jilp/articles/2-1_Stenson_Thomas.pdf http://www.uio.no/studier/emner/jus/humanrights/HUMR5503/h09/undervisningsmateriale/ingrid_detter.pdf http://themoderatevoice.com/26650/channeling-abraham-lincoln-george-bush-their-civil-liberty-power-grabs/ http://www.restore-habeas.org/whip/?q=IA http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/history_lesson/2001/11/lincolns_crackdown.html http://habeascorpus.net/hcwrit.html

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