Word: martial
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...Britain, martial law was abolished in 1628, though in modern times the government has occasionally invoked emergency regulations, particularly in the colonies-"in accordance," as one British legal expert put it, "with the standard of civilization of the states involved." Thus district commissioners sometimes had the power to administer justice, and preventive detention laws became part of the heritage of colonialism. Emergency powers, first enacted in 1920, were given the army in Northern Ireland in 1973. But at home the British did not use martial law even during the worst days of the World Wars. Their view, at least since...
...martial law is not specifically mentioned in the Constitution. President Washington chose to limit the use of military power when, after dispatching troops to quell the Whisky Rebellion of 1794, he ordered all insurgents to be turned over to civil rather than military courts for trial. But during the Civil War, as he struggled to hold the nation together, President Lincoln introduced preventive detention and military justice for thousands who opposed the war, including hundreds arrested in the bloody Draft Riots in New York City and elsewhere. This amounted to an imposition of martial law. In a landmark judgment, Chief...
Third World governments use a variety of names for their emergency powers. The Philippines has had full martial law since 1972, when President Ferdinand Marcos arrested hundreds of opponents and began to rule by decree. Marcos recently told a group of international lawyers that his people were more concerned about food than freedom anyway. "The bottom line of that argument," observes New York University Law School Professor Thomas Franck, "is that the suspension of political rights is a way to increase economic rights." So far, martial law has kept Marcos in power and accomplished not a great deal more...
South Korea's Park Chung-Hee has twice used martial law as a means of crushing dissent. Taiwan has never done so, but under a 30-year-old state of emergency the government can detain suspected opponents and try them in secret military courts. During the first year of Chile's state of siege following the 1973 overthrow of Marxist President Salvador Allende, an estimated 33,000 people disappeared or were killed. Pakistan is ruled by a "martial law administrator," General Zia ul-Haq, though his ministries are now headed by civilians. Nigeria, Ghana and Sudan all have...
...concept of martial law has meaning only when applied to a country that pays at least theoretical respect to the protection of human rights. In China there is no martial law, but neither does the populace enjoy most of the rights that could be jeopardized by martial law. In the Soviet Union, civilian authority as embodied in the Communist Party is all-powerful. The country has an intricate court system, and much attention is paid to what is called "socialist legality," but this is not to be confused with the Western concept of the rule of law. As the founder...