October 11, 2011

Quote(s) of the Day


"It is neither desirable nor is it remotely likely that civil liberty will occupy as favored a position in wartime as it does in peacetime. But it is both desirable and likely that more careful attention will be paid by the courts to the basis for the government's claims of necessity as a basis for curtailing civil liberty. The laws will thus not be silent in time of war, but they will speak with a somewhat different voice." 
Chief Justice William Rehnquist: All the Laws but One: Civil Liberties in Wartime, 1998


"Many think it not only inevitable but entirely proper that liberty give way to security in times of national crisis that, at the extremes of military exigency, inter arma silent leges. Whatever the general merits of the view that war silences law or modulates its voice, that view has no place in the interpretation and application of a Constitution designed precisely to confront war and, in a manner that accords with democratic principles, to accommodate it."
Justice Antonin Scalia: Hamdi v. Rumsfeld, 2004
 
Source: [Wiki] Inter arma enim silent leges

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