we interrupt your entertainment to bring you this Supreme Court ruling sponsored by colgate ~

[lookingland]

this is a placeholder (carry on, nothing much to see here).

The men appealed to the Supreme Court, based on the legal precedent of Ex parte Milligan (1866), which had reversed the conviction and death sentence of a Confederate "irregular" for acts committed in Indiana during the Civil War. In Milligan, the Court held that the government could not suspend habeas corpus nor resort to military courts if the civilian courts are open and functioning in areas outside of military operations. This ruling served as a permanent block to the wartime proclamation of martial law and the use of military tribunals, or so it [could be] argued.

The Court [later] ruled that Milligan did not apply to "enemy belligerents" for the simple fact that Milligan was not defined as an enemy belligerent by the government at the time. As a so-called Confederate irregular, Milligan was a prominent antiwar Democrat who supported the Confederacy and had conspired to help liberate Confederate prisoners form military prison camps. But he was not under orders from Confederate officials, nor was he a soldier, when he conspired to aid the Confederacy. The Court also held that a military trial [could be] justified [if] Congress had endorsed the international and unwritten "common law of war," and the Executive branch accordingly need not specifically define all the acts that violate this unwritten law.

~ History of the Supreme Court

if anyone had told me i'd be reading this sort of thing in the summer of 2007 (let alone finding it fascinating), i would have told them they were on the pipe.

anyway, this is an endnote or epitaph. or epilogue.

or something.

: o p