All the Laws But One

Chief Justice Rehnquist talked about his latest book on U.S. Supreme Court history, All the Laws But One, a book about wartime civil liberties. In 1861, with the survival of the United States in jeopardy, Abraham Lincoln responded to the national threat by suspending the writ of habeas corpus, a traditional bulwark of individual liberty. Lincoln’s decision reveals a conflict in the practice of American democracy, and in this absorbing new study the Chief Justice of the United States examines the inevitable clash between the demands of a successful war effort and the compelling need to protect civil liberties. Taking his title from Lincoln’s speech before Congress defending his suspension of the writ, William H. Rehnquist relates how the exigencies of wartime have strained civil liberties. The decisions made by a wartime government are unlike those made in times of peace, and here the Chief Justice guides the reader through the various wartime policies--and the legal decisions that followed: the Lincoln administration’s prosecution of civilians before military tribunals (as well as of the alleged conspirators in the Lincoln assassination); the criminalization in World War I of speech inciting resistance to the draft; the forcible relocation of Japanese-Americans in World War II; and the imposition for nearly three years of martial law in Hawaii. Each of these instances illustrates the Roman dictum Inter arma silent leges, "In time of war the laws are silent"; but as Rehnquist argues, that silence alternates with voices raised in defense of civil liberties. close