Legal Issues: Liberty or Safety: Should the Law Fall Mute?

Abstract

Benjamin Franklin really did say, “Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.” Well, technically he wrote those words in a letter written nearly 20 years prior to the Revolutionary War. Those words are regularly invoked whenever the government imposes some restriction or potential restriction on civil liberties, privacy or other personal rights in the interest of national security protection. History shows that this is a very common occurrence. In his book, All the Laws But One, the late Supreme Court Justice William Renhquist outlined a continuing series of restrictions on civil liberties starting famously with Abraham Lincoln’s suspension of the writ of Habeas Corpus and his administration’s arrest and detention without trial of over 13,000 citizens during the Civil War. During World War I, Congress enacted the Espionage and Sedition Acts, which made it illegal to publish any information opposing or resisting the war, and more infamously, World War II saw the internment of thousands of U.S. citizens of Japanese ancestry. The Cold War, the Vietnam War and the war on terrorism have all seen similar restrictions, including the controversial USA PATRIOT and its successors.