Political Quotes

“I think it can be reduced to very understandable principles and values that we share as Americans. When you think back to the earliest founding of the United States, we valued so much our personal freedom, our personal liberty, and our rights as individuals, and we created within our Constitution a means to ask a basic question. By the filing of a writ of habeas corpus, we ask this question, by what right does the Government hold this person? Habeas-- holding; corpus--body. One of the few words that I remember from the Latin I took many years ago. By what right does the Government hold this body, this person? That has been a writ, as they call it, a law that has been recognized and respected for generations. It is part of our American body of law. We don't want a circumstance where the Government is wholesale arresting individuals and detaining them without charging them. There was a time, of course, during our Civil War when President Abraham Lincoln suspended the writ of habeas corpus; arrested, detained, and jailed many people without charging them. It was then an extremely controversial decision.”