I want to keep this a factual Q&A. Please keep your political views to yourself.
According to wikipedia, a State of Emergency in a general sense is when "A government or division of government (i.e. on a municipal, provincial/state level) may declare that their area is in a state of emergency. This means that the government can suspend and/or change some functions of the executive, the legislative and/or the judiciary during this period of time. It alerts citizens to change their normal behavior and orders government agencies to implement emergency plans. A government can declare a state of emergency during a time of natural or human-made disaster, during a period of civil unrest, or following a declaration of war or situation of international/internal armed conflict… It can also be used as a rationale (or pretext) for suspending rights and freedoms guaranteed under a country’s constitution or basic law. The procedure for and legality of doing so varies by country.
My question is let’s say a sitting US president provokes an attack by a sovereign country, and both countriesengage in armed conflict. Can the president then declare a state of emergency, suspend habeas corpus and begin rounding up anyone the government deems to be an enemy of the state?
I don’t want to know whether the general population would stand for it, simply if the president has the power to do it.
I have a related question. States of Emergency are usually declared for sudden disasters like terrorist attacks or severe storms. Can they also be declared for ongoing crises, such as a wave of drug addiction?
The Constitution provides that Habeas corpus can be suspended during wartime. It’s ambiguous whether the Prez or Congress is the one with the power to suspend.
The Korean Armistice Agreement was signed on July 27, 1953. Wikipedia has this to say about it:
That said, I doubt that anyone seriously considers us to be at war with them, especially where things like declarations of emergency and suspension of .Habeas Corpus are concerned.
Various states of emergencies have been declared for decades now. I’m not certain they’ve been un-declared either. They probably dovetail with a lot of the legal chicanery they like to work around, and those pesky constitutional rights and other archaic belief systems.
My understanding is that the US was never at war with Korea, and, thus, can’t continue to be.
The agreement not ending the war would mean that North & South Korea are perpetually at war (hence the DMZ)–nothing to do with the US–as they’re the ones party to the Korean War.
It’s possible I’m confusing them with Vietnam (it all runs together), but one of them was only a “conflict”, not a “war”, as far as the US was concerned. I’m 99% sure that it was Korea.
The last “declared war” for the U.S. was World War II.
The Korean War was authorized by United Nations Security Council Resolution 84 and was funded by Congress.
The Vietnam War was authorized by the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution.
So while not officially “declared”, both of those wars did have congressional approval.
The Korean Armistice Agreement was an agreement between militaries, not between governments. The U.S. Government never officially declared an end to the hostilities. The U.S. Military only agreed to stop shooting (on the U.S. side it was signed by U.S. Army Lieutenant General William Harrison, Jr.). I’ll leave it to someone who has a better understanding of international law to say if that was “good enough” considering that an official war was never declared.
The Vietnam War ended with the Paris Peace Accords. President Nixon, representing the U.S. Government and not just the military, signed the peace agreement.
Thank you! It’s been a while since world history & war/military operations was never my specialty.
Anyway, within the context, I would question whether “ongoing hostilities” meet the same bar as “war” (the use of the latter being how this became a topic of discussion in the first place).
That was my point in bringing it up in the first place. If we were never “at war” with them, then the ongoing issues wouldn’t be considered “war”, and, thus, wouldn’t meet the criteria in question, as was originally suggested.
The country has been in a declared state of emergency since September 14, 2001 when President Bush issued Proclamation 7463. This gave the President certain powers over the armed forces he didn’t have in a non-emergency. It only lasted for one year but it’s subject to perpetual renewal and it has been renewed every year through the Bush and Obama administrations.
The oldest national state of emergency that’s still in effect is Executive Order 12170, which was issued by President Carter on November 14, 1979. This order declared a state of emergency regarding the hostage crisis and gave Carter the authority to seize Iranian assets in the United States. As with the above example, it has to be renewed every year and all the presidents since 1979 have done so.
[QUOTE=Suspension Clause]
The Privilege of the Writ of Habeas Corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in Cases of Rebellion or Invasion the public Safety may require it.
[/QUOTE]
So, not simply war. There must be an actual invasion or rebellion AND the public safety requires it.
Does a declaration of a state of emergency have to have a time limit? If so, why?
The 2 SOEs cited here both have to be renewed annually. Is that the case for all SOEs?
The laws that govern official states of emergency (the National Emergencies Act of 1976 and the International Emergency Economic Powers Act of 1977) give them a one year limit unless they are renewed.
That’s kind of where I was going with this. I think the US was fundamentally different in 1942 and FDR was able to round up Americans of Japanese descent and the country was okay with it. As my 91 year old father often says, in those days we believed in the what the president said and did and nobody questioned it.
It’s 2017 and the country is different. I don’t think a sitting president could get away with locking up all Muslims for example. My question was does the president have the power to do it and I think the answer is yes, assuiming we get into a shooting war with somebody, but there would likely be an impeachment trial and at least the chance that the president is removed.
I’m encouraged by your optimism and feelings of how far we’ve advanced since the 1940s. However, I don’t share the same degree of faith in the American “body politic” as you.
The precedent for the OP has been established. There has been no change in statute to prevent a re-occurrence. The only thing halting such episodes, is the political attitude of the times… And times change.
Of course in hindsight everyone is suitably appalled, but from 1939 to 1943 the Allies were getting their ass kicked in almost every theatre of war. The internment of the Japanese didn’t happen in a vacuum. Today we look back at history with the assured inevitability of an Allied victory, this was not the case at the time. Context as they say, is everything.