Treason is the crime of attacking a state authority to which one owes allegiance. This typically includes acts such as participating in a war against one's native country, attempting to overthrow its government, spying on its military, its diplomats, or its secret services for a hostile and foreign power, or attempting to kill its head of state. A person who commits treason is known in law as a traitor.
Article Three of the United States Constitution establishes the judicial branch of the federal government. Under Article Three, the judicial branch consists of the Supreme Court of the United States, as well as lower courts created by Congress. Article Three empowers the courts to handle cases or controversies arising under federal law, as well as other enumerated areas. Article Three also defines treason.
Ex parte Merryman, 17 F. Cas. 144 (No. 9487), is a well-known and controversial U.S. federal court case that arose out of the American Civil War. It was a test of the authority of the President to suspend "the privilege of the writ of habeas corpus" under the Constitution's Suspension Clause, when Congress was in recess and therefore unavailable to do so itself. More generally, the case raised questions about the ability of the executive branch to decline enforcement of judicial decisions when the executive believes them to be erroneous and harmful to its own legal powers.
Ex parte Milligan, 71 U.S. 2 (1866), was a landmark decision of the US Supreme Court that ruled the application of military tribunals to citizens when civilian courts are still operating is unconstitutional. In this particular case, the Court was unwilling to give President Abraham Lincoln's administration the power of military commission jurisdiction, part of the administration's controversial plan to deal with Union dissenters during the American Civil War. Justice David Davis, who delivered the majority opinion, stated that "martial rule can never exist when the courts are open" and confined martial law to areas of "military operations, where war really prevails", and when it was a necessity to provide a substitute for a civil authority that had been overthrown. Chief Justice Salmon P. Chase and three associate justices filed a separate opinion concurring with the majority in the judgment, but asserted that Congress had the power to authorize a military commission, although it had not done so in Milligan's case.
William Johnson Jr. was an American attorney, state legislator, and jurist who served as an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States from 1804 to 1834. When he was 32 years old, Johnson was appointed to the Supreme Court by President Thomas Jefferson. He was the first Jeffersonian Republican member of the Court as well as the second Justice from the state of South Carolina. During his tenure, Johnson restored the act of delivering seriatim opinions. He wrote about half of the dissents during the Marshall Court, leading historians to nickname him the "first dissenter".
A number of cases were tried before the Supreme Court of the United States during the period of the American Civil War. These cases focused on wartime civil liberties, and the ability of the various branches of the government to alter them. The following cases were among the most significant.
Ex parte Quirin, 317 U.S. 1 (1942), is a case of the United States Supreme Court during World War II that upheld the jurisdiction of a United States military tribunal over the trial of eight German saboteurs in the United States. Quirin has been cited as a precedent for the trial by military commission of any unlawful combatant against the United States.
Cramer v. United States, 325 U.S. 1 (1945), was a case in which the Supreme Court of the United States reviewed the conviction of Anthony Cramer, a German-born naturalized citizen, for treason.
Samuel Swartwout was an American soldier, merchant, speculator, and politician. He is best known for his role in the Swartwout-Hoyt scandal, in which he was alleged to have embezzled $1,222,705.09 during his tenure as Collector of the Port of New York.
The Burr conspiracy was a plot alleged to have been planned by Aaron Burr in the years during and after his term as Vice President of the United States under US President Thomas Jefferson. According to the accusations against Burr, he attempted to use his international connections and support from a cabal of US planters, politicians, and army officers to establish an independent country in the Southwestern United States and parts of Mexico. Burr's version was that he intended to farm 40,000 acres (160 km2) in the Texas Territory which had been leased to him by the Spanish Crown.
On finding the simple categorization of United States Supreme Court articles on Wikipedia insufficient for purposes of easily searching for case law that deals with a certain topic, this index is being created to make things easier. Topics are listed alphabetically. If a topic has a sub-topic, the subtopic is listed under the main topic.
Constructive treason is the judicial extension of the statutory definition of the crime of treason. For example, the English Treason Act 1351 declares it to be treason "When a Man doth compass or imagine the Death of our Lord the King." This was subsequently interpreted by the courts to include imprisoning the king, on the ground that history had shown that when a king is held captive by a usurper, he often dies in captivity. Despite legislative efforts to restrict the scope of treason, judges and prosecutors in common law jurisdictions still succeeded in broadening the reach of the offence by "constructing" new treasons. It is the opinion of one legal historian that:
The word “constructive” is one of the law’s most useful frauds. It implies substance where none exists. There can be constructive contracts, constructive trusts, constructive fraud, constructive intent, constructive possession, and constructive anything else the law chooses to baptize as such. “Constructive” in this sense means “treated as.” ... Constructive treason wasn’t “real” treason but a vaguely defined, less potent category of conduct that the court deciding the particular case felt should be “treated as” treason. It was the perfect instrument of oppression, being virtually whatever the authorities wanted it to be.
The Marshall Court (1801–1835) heard forty-one criminal law cases, slightly more than one per year. Among such cases are United States v. Simms (1803), United States v. More (1805), Ex parte Bollman (1807), United States v. Hudson (1812), Cohens v. Virginia (1821), United States v. Perez (1824), Worcester v. Georgia (1832), and United States v. Wilson (1833).
United States v. More, 7 U.S. 159 (1805), was a United States Supreme Court case in which the Court held that it had no jurisdiction to hear appeals from criminal cases in the circuit courts by writs of error. Relying on the Exceptions Clause, More held that Congress's enumerated grants of appellate jurisdiction to the Court operated as an exercise of Congress's power to eliminate all other forms of appellate jurisdiction.
The Taney Court heard thirty criminal law cases, approximately one per year. Notable cases include Prigg v. Pennsylvania (1842), United States v. Rogers (1846), Ableman v. Booth (1858), Ex parte Vallandigham (1861), and United States v. Jackalow (1862).
The Crimes Act of 1790, formally titled An Act for the Punishment of Certain Crimes Against the United States, defined some of the first federal crimes in the United States and expanded on the criminal procedure provisions of the Judiciary Act of 1789. The Crimes Act was a "comprehensive statute defining an impressive variety of federal crimes".
