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seawasp Not cutting this one.
Stephen Miller, one of the likely main puppetmasters behind the increasingly incoherent President Trump, said that the Administration is "actively looking at" suspending habeas corpus.
Right or Left Wing, this should be yanking you out of your chair shouting "WHAT THE EVERLIVING F**K?".
Habeas corpus, or, roughly, "produce the body", is an absolutely FUNDAMENTAL principle of Western legal jurisprudence. It is written directly into the Constitution, but predates it -- all the way back to the Magna Carta ("Great Writ") which defined the limits of the powers of the King and his government with respect to the citizens. It is the most basic requirement of modern law that you CANNOT simply arrest a person without a proper warrant -- that the government is REQUIRED to present, to a properly empowered judge, the evidence that you, personally, are properly and justifiably suspected of a particular and defined wrongdoing, and that therefore you may be detained and held for trial.
This is a UNIVERSAL right -- it applies to all persons, not just citizens, not even just those legally present, and it MUST do so.
Why?
Because habeas corpus -- following that required process of presenting evidence and satisfying the legal system that not only has some legal wrongdoing occurred, but that there is good and sufficient reason to believe that THIS PARTICULAR PERSON is responsible for it -- is THE ONLY PROTECTION ANY OF US HAVE AGAINST BEING ARRESTED AND DISAPPEARED.
"But wait, shouldn't it only apply to citizens, or at least legally present persons?"
Um, guy, HOW DO YOU KNOW SOMEONE IS ILLEGALLY PRESENT... unless you present legal evidence to that fact?
It is not sufficient that a police officer (or other member of law enforcement) THINKS they have the right person. They have to be SURE. They have to PROVE it. They have to provide good and sufficient reason to believe that this person is the one they sought, and that they have sufficient evidence to justify that person's arrest and detainment -- and THAT PERSON MUST HAVE A CHANCE TO DEFEND THEMSELVES -- to argue "No, man, that's the guy in Apartment 2B, not 2A, which is mine. I'm not the guy you want", and have proper legal representation for it.
This is not optional. This is a bedrock and absolutely NECESSARY principle of US law, and the very THOUGHT that ANYONE in the Federal government -- let alone someone highly enough placed to actually be able to try and "SUSPEND" it -- should send shivers down your spine.
And it is, unfortunately, DIRECTLY in line with what these people have been doing all along. They have shown an utter contempt for the law as it stands, while claiming to be for "law and order". The structure of Project 2025 is a framework for creating a very UN-American government, one run primarily by the President and his loyalty-checked, handpicked sycophants, for the service of both corporate stockholders and a peculiarly virulent strain of Evangelical "Christianity".
To those who have looked at history, there are an awful, AWFUL lot of parallels here between the Trumpian new regime and that seen in Germany in 1933.
Stephen Miller, one of the likely main puppetmasters behind the increasingly incoherent President Trump, said that the Administration is "actively looking at" suspending habeas corpus.
Right or Left Wing, this should be yanking you out of your chair shouting "WHAT THE EVERLIVING F**K?".
Habeas corpus, or, roughly, "produce the body", is an absolutely FUNDAMENTAL principle of Western legal jurisprudence. It is written directly into the Constitution, but predates it -- all the way back to the Magna Carta ("Great Writ") which defined the limits of the powers of the King and his government with respect to the citizens. It is the most basic requirement of modern law that you CANNOT simply arrest a person without a proper warrant -- that the government is REQUIRED to present, to a properly empowered judge, the evidence that you, personally, are properly and justifiably suspected of a particular and defined wrongdoing, and that therefore you may be detained and held for trial.
This is a UNIVERSAL right -- it applies to all persons, not just citizens, not even just those legally present, and it MUST do so.
Why?
Because habeas corpus -- following that required process of presenting evidence and satisfying the legal system that not only has some legal wrongdoing occurred, but that there is good and sufficient reason to believe that THIS PARTICULAR PERSON is responsible for it -- is THE ONLY PROTECTION ANY OF US HAVE AGAINST BEING ARRESTED AND DISAPPEARED.
"But wait, shouldn't it only apply to citizens, or at least legally present persons?"
Um, guy, HOW DO YOU KNOW SOMEONE IS ILLEGALLY PRESENT... unless you present legal evidence to that fact?
It is not sufficient that a police officer (or other member of law enforcement) THINKS they have the right person. They have to be SURE. They have to PROVE it. They have to provide good and sufficient reason to believe that this person is the one they sought, and that they have sufficient evidence to justify that person's arrest and detainment -- and THAT PERSON MUST HAVE A CHANCE TO DEFEND THEMSELVES -- to argue "No, man, that's the guy in Apartment 2B, not 2A, which is mine. I'm not the guy you want", and have proper legal representation for it.
This is not optional. This is a bedrock and absolutely NECESSARY principle of US law, and the very THOUGHT that ANYONE in the Federal government -- let alone someone highly enough placed to actually be able to try and "SUSPEND" it -- should send shivers down your spine.
And it is, unfortunately, DIRECTLY in line with what these people have been doing all along. They have shown an utter contempt for the law as it stands, while claiming to be for "law and order". The structure of Project 2025 is a framework for creating a very UN-American government, one run primarily by the President and his loyalty-checked, handpicked sycophants, for the service of both corporate stockholders and a peculiarly virulent strain of Evangelical "Christianity".
To those who have looked at history, there are an awful, AWFUL lot of parallels here between the Trumpian new regime and that seen in Germany in 1933.
no subject
Date: 2025-05-10 10:20 pm (UTC)That scares the shit out of me. Regularly, since November 2016.
no subject
Date: 2025-05-10 10:57 pm (UTC)Thoughts
Date: 2025-05-10 10:51 pm (UTC)The part that concerns me is that they've gone from plain refoulement, which is dumping people back in their own country that they fled from (and is also illegal if the person fled for safety reasons, but nobody cares about that anymore) to handing off people to a third country which is not okay. You can't just give away someone else's livestock like that, you can only return them to the original government that owns them.
Re: Thoughts
Date: 2025-05-10 10:57 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2025-05-11 08:44 am (UTC)Contrarian point:
Habeas Corpus was never part of Scottish Law (it was very much an English thing) but Scotland found a way to achieve the same results (no suspension of due process) regardless.
And Habeas Corpus is no longer part of English law either: the very last vestiges of it were wound up in 1998 when the Human Rights Act came into force (which is a part of Scottish Law), which implements the European Convention of Human Rights in the English and Scottish legal systems at a constitutional level.
TLDR: you can have a justice system that works without Habeas Corpus.
So Habeas Corpus is to some extent a shibboleth these days. It is, however, very concerning that a nazi-adjacent MAGA is calling for its suspension, because it is a (increasingly antiquated) part of US law and he's not proposing to replace it with anything except the Will of the Führer.
no subject
Date: 2025-05-11 01:34 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2025-05-12 07:14 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2025-05-13 07:01 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2025-05-12 01:49 pm (UTC)