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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.
Dred Scott v. Sandford, 60 U.S. 393 (1857), was a landmark decision of the United States Supreme Court that held the U.S. Constitution did not extend American citizenship to people of black African descent, and thus they could not enjoy the rights and privileges the Constitution conferred upon American citizens. The decision is widely considered the worst in the Supreme Court's history, being widely denounced for its overt racism, perceived judicial activism, poor legal reasoning, and crucial role in the start of the American Civil War four years later. Legal scholar Bernard Schwartz said that it "stands first in any list of the worst Supreme Court decisions". Chief Justice Charles Evans Hughes called it the Court's "greatest self-inflicted wound".
Ex parte Merryman, 17 F. Cas. 144 (No. 9487), was a 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 to enforce 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), is a landmark decision of the U.S. Supreme Court that ruled that the use of military tribunals to try civilians when civil courts are operating is unconstitutional. In this particular case, the Court was unwilling to give former 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 asserting that Congress had the power to authorize a military commission, although it had not done so in Milligan's case.
Clement Laird Vallandigham was an American lawyer and politician who served as the leader of the Copperhead faction of anti-war Democrats during the American Civil War.
Military tribunals in the United States are military courts designed to judicially try members of enemy forces during wartime, operating outside the scope of conventional criminal and civil proceedings. The judges are military officers and fulfill the role of jurors. Military tribunals are distinct from courts-martial.
The Baltimore riot of 1861 was a civil conflict on Friday, April 19, 1861, on Pratt Street, in Baltimore, Maryland. It occurred between antiwar "Copperhead" Democrats and other Southern/Confederate sympathizers on one side, and on the other, members of Massachusetts and Pennsylvania state militia regiments en route to the national capital at Washington who had been called up for federal service. The fighting began at the President Street Station, spreading throughout President Street and subsequently to Howard Street, where it ended at the Camden Street Station. The riot produced the first deaths of Union volunteers by hostile action, although caused by civilians, in the American Civil War. Civilians among the attackers also were killed.
The Taney Arrest Warrant is a conjectural controversy in Abraham Lincoln scholarship. The argument is that in late May or early June 1861, President Lincoln secretly ordered an arrest warrant for Roger B. Taney, the Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court, but abandoned the proposal. The arrest order is said to have been in response to Taney's Circuit Judge ruling in Ex parte Merryman, which found Lincoln's suspension of the writ of habeas corpus to be unconstitutional.
John Merryman of Baltimore County, Maryland, was arrested in May 1861 and held prisoner in Fort McHenry in Baltimore and was the petitioner in the case "Ex parte Merryman" which was one of the best known habeas corpus cases of the American Civil War (1861–1865). Merryman was arrested for his involvement in the mob in Baltimore, specifically for his leadership in the destruction of telegraph lines, but was not charged, a right normally ensured by the writ of habeas corpus. The case was taken up by the federal circuit court and its current presiding judge who happened to be Chief Justice Roger B. Taney, a Democrat-leaning Marylander.
Inter arma enim silent leges is a Latin phrase that literally means "For among arms, the laws are silent" but is more popularly rendered as "In times of war, the law falls silent."
Lambdin Purdy Milligan was an American lawyer and farmer who was the subject of Ex parte Milligan 71 U.S. 2 (1866), a landmark case by the Supreme Court of the United States. He was known for his extreme opinions on states' rights and his opposition to the Lincoln administration's conduct of the American Civil War.
During the American Civil War (1861–1865), Maryland, a slave state, was one of the border states, straddling the South and North. Despite some popular support for the cause of the Confederate States of America, Maryland did not secede during the Civil War. Governor Thomas H. Hicks, despite his early sympathies for the South, helped prevent the state from seceding.
In United States law, habeas corpus is a recourse challenging the reasons or conditions of a person's confinement under color of law. A petition for habeas corpus is filed with a court that has jurisdiction over the custodian, and if granted, a writ is issued directing the custodian to bring the confined person before the court for examination into those reasons or conditions. The Suspension Clause of the United States Constitution specifically included the English common law procedure in Article One, Section 9, clause 2, which demands 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."
The Chase Court refers to the Supreme Court of the United States from 1864 to 1873, when Salmon P. Chase served as the sixth Chief Justice of the United States. Chase succeeded Roger Taney as Chief Justice after the latter's death. Appointed by President Abraham Lincoln, Chase served as Chief Justice until his death, at which point Morrison Waite was nominated and confirmed as his successor.
Roger Brooke Taney was an American lawyer and politician who served as the fifth chief justice of the United States, holding that office from 1836 until his death in 1864. Taney infamously delivered the majority opinion in Dred Scott v. Sandford (1857), ruling that African Americans could not be considered U.S. citizens and that Congress could not prohibit slavery in the U.S. territories. Prior to joining the U.S. Supreme Court, Taney served as the U.S. attorney general and U.S. secretary of the treasury under President Andrew Jackson. He was the first Catholic to serve on the Supreme Court.
Ex parte Vallandigham, 68 U.S. 243 (1864), is a United States Supreme Court case, involving a former congressman Clement Vallandigham of Ohio, who had violated an Army order against the public expression of sympathy for the Confederate States and their cause. Vallandigham was tried before a military tribunal by Major General Ambrose E. Burnside for treason after he delivered an incendiary speech at Mount Vernon; he then appealed the tribunal's verdict to the Supreme Court, arguing that he as a civilian could not be tried before a military tribunal.
Frank Key Howard was the grandson of Francis Scott Key and Revolutionary War colonel John Eager Howard. Howard was the editor of the Daily Exchange, a Baltimore newspaper sympathetic to the Confederacy. Just after midnight on September 13, 1861, he was arrested without a warrant at his home by U.S. Major General Nathaniel Prentice Banks on the direct orders of General George B. McClellan enforcing the policy of President Abraham Lincoln. The basis for his arrest was the writing of an editorial printed in his newspaper that was critical of Lincoln's suspension of the writ of habeas corpus, of the declaration by the Lincoln administration of martial law in Baltimore, and of the imprisonment without charge of Baltimore mayor George William Brown, sitting U.S. Congressman Henry May, all the police commissioners of Baltimore, and the entire city council. Lincoln's suspension of habeas corpus in Maryland had already been declared unconstitutional by U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice Roger Taney in Ex parte Merryman, but Lincoln had ignored the federal court ruling. Howard was initially confined to Fort McHenry, the same fort his grandfather Francis Scott Key saw withstand a British bombardment during the War of 1812, which inspired him to write "The Star-Spangled Banner", which would become the national anthem of the United States of America. He was then transferred first to Fort Lafayette in Lower New York Bay off the coast of Brooklyn, then Fort Warren in Boston.
The Habeas Corpus Suspension Act, 12 Stat. 755 (1863), entitled An Act relating to Habeas Corpus, and regulating Judicial Proceedings in Certain Cases, was an Act of Congress that authorized the president of the United States to suspend the right of habeas corpus in response to the American Civil War and provided for the release of political prisoners. It began in the House of Representatives as an indemnity bill, introduced on December 5, 1862, releasing the president and his subordinates from any liability for having suspended habeas corpus without congressional approval. The Senate amended the House's bill, and the compromise reported out of the conference committee altered it to qualify the indemnity and to suspend habeas corpus on Congress's own authority. Abraham Lincoln signed the bill into law on March 3, 1863, and suspended habeas corpus under the authority it granted him six months later. The suspension was partially lifted with the issuance of Proclamation 148 by Andrew Johnson, and the Act became inoperative with the end of the Civil War. The exceptions to his Proclamation 148 were the States of Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Arkansas, and Texas, the District of Columbia, and the Territories of New Mexico and Arizona.
Ex parte McQuillon, 16 F. Cas. 347 (1861), was a case decided in August 1861 by the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York involving a writ of habeas corpus. Judge Samuel Betts issued the writ for Purcell McQuillon, who was being held in military custody at Fort Lafayette, but the commandant of the fort declined to bring McQuillon before the court as demanded, citing an order from Gen. Winfield Scott. Over the objection of McQuillon's attorney, Judge Betts took no further action on the case, declaring that it would be indecorous to openly disagree with Chief Justice Taney's reasoning in ex parte Merryman, but that the Constitution must be defended in whatever way it can be and the public would not want everyone to have access to habeas corpus during the Civil War.
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 Chase Court (1864–1873) issued thirty-five opinions in criminal cases over nine years, at a significantly higher rate than the Marshall Court or Taney Court before it. Notable such cases include Ex parte Milligan (1866), Pervear v. Massachusetts (1866), Ex parte McCardle, Ex parte Yerger (1868), and United States v. Kirby (1868).
