Rumour has it...

[tyggerjai]

U.S. citizens complaining about loss of rights, and unconstitutional war may in fact , technically, be shit out of luck.

Apparently, the War Powers Act was invoked during the Depression, allowing FDR to fiddle with economic foo (Gold standard, etc) due to a "state of emergency".
Said state of emergency allows the President to suspend the consitution. Said state of emergency can only be revoked by the President. N oPresident has ever revoked the state of emergency.

Lorenzo? Is this accurate?

Of course, that hasn't stopped the U.S. courts from upholding consitutional rights anyway, but nonetheless...

sol.
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Comments

[erudito.livejournal.com]

I haven't heard of this one at all. In having a quick look, came across a couple of references on the web, notably http://www.wealth4freedom.com/truth/waract.htm. (But fulminating about the evil FDR is a common theme amongst the more way-out libertarians.) And the US is such a litigous society, I would be startled if this hadn't been thoroughly dealt with. (Come to that, the Republican Congresses of the later 1940s would surely have had a field day over it.)

Congress passed a new War Powers Act in 1973 (see http://www.cs.indiana.edu/statecraft/warpow.html ) It superseded any previous law it contradicted (this being a basic principle of legislative interpretation, it being assumed the legislature meant any contradiction of old law to be intended to be overridden by the new law).

It has long been Constitutional principle that some things not legal in peacetime become legal in wartime. The Americans tend to be much more finicky about this than anyone else, though. (E.g. it is still legal to burn the American flag, while it is not legal to burn the French flag in France.) And it has never been interpreted on an 'anything goes' basis. The Executive has to show due purpose. This may be interpreted fairly generously by the courts but I doubt that they would be as generous in the current situation as they were in, say, WWII.

I have seen a lot of hyperbole about this general issue, but precious little reliable specifics.

It ocurred to me...

[tyggerjai.livejournal.com]

That there's been at least one World War since then, and presumably at the end of that someone said "Right, back to normal". Unless they just segued nicely into Korea, thence Vietnam, thence the Cold War, thence, uh, whatever.

sol.
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Re: It ocurred to me...

[erudito.livejournal.com]

The US demobilised pretty thoroughly in 1945. One reason they went so enthusiastically nuclear -- something to wave in front of the Soviets. So I suspect that there were some sort of legal clean-up.

And there have been a few civil rights advances since -- Civil Rights Act, Freedom of Information, that sort of stuff.

Moreover, from memory, neither Korea nor Vietnam involved any domestic security legislation of note. This time around has been a bit different, but 3000 people dead in the middle of New York will do that. Mind you, I think there was a major Act -- the National Security Act or something -- at the beginning of the Cold War. But I think that mainly dealt with setting up intelligence organisations.

And also

[erudito.livejournal.com]

If you want a much more authoritative site, try http://www.law.cornell.edu/background/warpower/