Friday, September 29, 2006

Oppressive and Lawless

Executive imprisonment has been considered oppressive and lawless since John, at Runnymede, pledged that no free man should be imprisoned, dispossessed, outlawed, or exiled save by the judgment of his peers or by the law of the land. The judges of England developed the writ of habeas corpus largely to preserve these immunities from executive restraint.
--Justice Robert H. Jackson (Brown v. Allen, 1953)

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