Court bars monarchy powers in U.S.:Marie Cocco

[jbfam4]

Court bars monarchy powers in U.S.
Marie Cocco

http://www.newsday.com/news/opinion/ny-vpcoc293872186jun29,0,7924294,print.column?coll=ny-viewpoints-headlines

June 29, 2004

Long live the Constitution.

The American president is not a king, the Supreme Court said yesterday. He may not assume a monarch's power to round up subjects or enemies and cast them indefinitely into a dungeon.

No president may hold an American citizen indefinitely without any means to contest allegations against him - even if that citizen was literally picked up on the battlefield where the United States is at war. No president may round up hundreds of foreigners and hold them in an offshore realm of lawlessness, where there is no hope for winning even a word with a relative, let alone a lawyer.


"It is during our most challenging and uncertain moments that our Nation's commitment to due process is most severely tested," Justice Sandra Day O'Connor wrote in the plurality opinion holding that an American citizen picked up on the Afghan battlefield is entitled to a lawyer and a proceeding to contest his detention. "And it is in those times that we must preserve our commitment at home to the principles for which we fight abroad."


"We have long since made clear that a state of war is not a blank check for the President when it comes to the rights of the Nation's citizens," O'Connor wrote.

[nickinSTL]

1. Why monarchy?

Why is it always powers of a 'king' or 'monarchy' that gets bashed?

The power of a dictator or authoritarian ruler would be more appropriate.

There are several kings or monarchs in Europe who don't have the kind of power being referred to here.

Kings can have anything from no power to absolute power, yet in America, it's always the absolute power that is associated with monarchs.

If you mean dictator, say dictator, not monarch.

[teryang]

2. You're right this is the politically correct approach

...placed in the context of the magna carta rather than references to the emergence of fascist dictators before WWII.

[struggle4progress]

3. The word "monarch" has been previously used before the Court ...

... when Tricky Dick's lawyer said, "The President wants me to argue that he is as powerful a monarch as Louis XIV, only four years at a time, and is not subject to the processes of any court in the land except the court of impeachment."

[nickinSTL]

4. What?

Is this true?

Sorry if I'm missing some joke, but if this is true...

Scary. Louis XIV had basically unlimited power...

[struggle4progress]

5. Not a joke. I think the lawyer was embarrassed to argue the point. eom

[sbreen]

6. wow

never knew