What steps would GWB, or any U.S. President for that matter, have to take in order to initiate martial law?
Martial law is declared by executive order for a specific area, and requires (I think this is spelled out somewhere in statute) a finding that disaster, combat, or civic unrest have led to the total incapacity of the civil authorities to maintain order. The leading court cases on the limits to martial law are from the 1860s, Ex parte Valladingham and Ex parte Milligan.
Oddly enough, I’m in the middle of a Staff Report on this very issue!
Stay tuned…
Please hurry. I’m sure the “W is going to declare martial law so he can stay president” threads are coming soon.
According to a realtive of mine, 23 states are currently under martial law already. We just don’t know about it!
Not that I agree with your relative, but this isn’t necessarily such an off-the-wall assertion. Depending on how one subjectively defines martial law, that is. The military will always be upset and react if you do something they don’t like. Martial law typically extends ‘things the military doesn’t like’ to overlap with a certain aspect of what people consider ‘normal law’. It doesn’t have to be called ‘martial law’ to be so.
If you are consistent in defining what aspects of what you consider to be your freedoms and aspects of normal law and encroached by the military and how, you can fairly reasonably consider some parts of the US (or any other country with a military) to be under martial law right now.