![]() ![]() Article I, Section 9 of the United States Constitution, which mostly consists of limitations upon the power of Congress, includes the Suspension Clause: The court can remand the prisoner to custody, release him on bail, or release him outright. When a person is detained by police or other authority, a court can issue a writ of habeas corpus, compelling the detaining authority either to show proper cause for detaining the person (e.g., by filing criminal charges) or to release the detainee. Due to its vague jurisdictional locus and hastened disposition, aspects of the Merryman decision remain contested to this day. According to this view, Merryman was an in-chambers opinion. One view, based in part on Taney's handwritten copy of his decision in Merryman, is that Taney heard the habeas action under special authority granted to federal judges by Section 14 of the Judiciary Act of 1789. Taney filed his Merryman decision with the United States Circuit Court for the District of Maryland, but it is unclear if Taney's decision was a circuit court decision. The Executive Branch, including the United States Army, under the authority of the President of the United States as Commander-in-Chief, did not comply with Taney's Merryman opinion. Taney ruled in this case the authority to suspend habeas corpus lay exclusively with Congress. Held prisoner in Fort McHenry in Baltimore harbor, he was kept inaccessible to the judiciary and to civilian legal authorities generally. John Merryman was a prominent planter from Baltimore County, Maryland, who had been arrested at his rural plantation. 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. 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. federal court case that arose out of the American Civil War. Taney issued the ruling in Ex parte Merryman.Įx parte Merryman, 17 F. Cas. 144 (C.C.D.
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