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A writ of habeas corpus is a formal legal document issued by a court of law which orders that a person being detained be brought before a judge for a hearing to decide whether the detention is lawful. Habeas corpus is a basic individual protection against arbitrary arrest and imprisonment. Habeas corpus is a fundamental concept of human rights and law in the U.S. and other countries that follow basic English law. It has played an important role in preventing arbitrary and secret arrests and detention, requiring that people who are arrested be told the charges of their arrest, and allowsing such people a fair trial. In some countries that do not have the concept of habeas corpus, people have been held for long periods without charges, tortured, put on trial based on evidence that they are not allowed to see and refute, and even sentenced to death based on testimony extracted from witnesses using torture. Habeas corpus is a Latin phrase meaning you have the body. The term was used as early as the 14th century in England, and it was formalized in the Habeas Corpus Act of 1679. The use of this writ as a safeguard against illegal imprisonment was highly regarded by the British colonists in America, and wrongful refusals to issue the writ were one of the grievances before the American Revolution. As a result, the Constitution of the United States states in Article 1, Section 9 that “The Privilege of the Writ of Habeas Corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in Cases of Rebellion or Invasion the public Safety may require it.” President Abraham Lincoln suspended habeas corpus in 1861 at the beginning of the Civil War, and his decision was upheld by Congress—despite protests by Chief Justice Roger Taney that such suspension was not within the powers of the President. The Supreme Court's liberal decisions in the 1950s and 1960s in the area of prisoners' rights encouraged many incarcerated persons to file writs challenging their convictions, but the Court under William Rehnquist limited multiple habeas corpus filings, particularly from prisoners on death row. In October, 2006, President George Bush signed a bill which would suspend habeas corpus for any alien determined by the president to be an "unlawful enemy combatant engaged in hostilities or having supported hostilities against the United States" after passage by a large majority in both houses Congress. However, this bill was strongly criticized on a number of grounds, including removing an important check on the power of the president, being unconstitutional, violating the Geneva Conventions, violating long-held and basic American prinicples of justice, and inviting retaliation from other countries. Created October 23, 2006. |