Article I, section 9 of the U.S. Constitution guarantees each man his day in court, and due process. In 1863, President Abraham Lincoln suspended the Habeas Corpus, the very writ that restricted the government from unlawfully imprisoning its people for any reason, or no reason at all. During this stage of injustice, multiple people who spoke against the President's seemingly irrational behavior were arrested and jailed. Lincoln claimed that these actions were a matter of National Security. Many historians and writers alike disagree with his actions.
When the Founding Fathers created the Separation of Powers, they were making a strong attempt to stop the newborn America from turning into a tyrannical empire like Great Britain. The Separation of Powers granted the Executive Branch the most power over America's armed forces, but gave the Legislative Branch the ability to declare war, splitting the powers over the military. The Judicial Branch has the ability to decide what laws or governmental actions are unconstitutional. These are quite important to keep the United States under control, and keep the President from getting too aggressive in his (or her) term. This wasn't at all how the Civil …show more content…
Dueholm, author of Lincoln's Suspension of the Writ of Habeas Corpus: An Historical and Constitutional Analysis, says that Lincoln "often engaged in extended, closely reasoned and powerfully argued legal analysis." However, he goes on to add that for Lincoln's First Inaugural Address and the Special Session Message conducted on July 4, 1861, he "swung a long, lawyerly club at the claimed right of secession." Dueholm goes on to say that Lincoln had a "non-lawyerly appeal to his war powers" to justify or make excuses for his extraordinary wartime measures, and a slow, lackadaisical approach towards the appeal. This comes across as condescending, with Lincoln seeming to believe that the only way his power could come across as okay would be to "dumb it down," so to