REHNQUIST: LOSS OF LIBERTY PAR FOR COURSE IN WAR TIME
LA TIMES - Chief Justice William Rehnquist, reviewing the history of civil liberties during wartime, said the courts are inclined to bend the law in the government's favor during a time of hostilities. "One is reminded of the Latin maxim inter arma silent leges. In time of war, the laws are silent," Rehnquist said in a speech to federal judges meeting in Williamsburg, Va. He cited as examples President Abraham Lincoln's suspension of the right to habeas corpus during the Civil War as well as the Supreme Court's willingness to uphold the internment of Japanese Americans and the secret military trial of eight Nazi saboteurs during World War II. After the Civil War, the Supreme Court unanimously overruled the Union's use of a military trial to condemn several Confederate sympathizers in Indiana. And Congress later apologized for the Japanese internment, but long after the war was over. "These cases suggest that while the laws are surely not silent in time of war, courts may interpret them differently then than in time of peace," Rehnquist said.
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