Document Type
Article
Publication Date
1983
ISSN
0021-0552
Publisher
University of Iowa College of Law
Language
en-US
Abstract
"Democracy," said Churchill, "means that if the door bell rings in the early hours, it is likely to be the milkman." He might have added that if the caller is not the milkman, but a police officer, Anglo-American democracy contemplates that the writ of habeas corpus will be available to the citizen awakened and dragged off into the darkness. The Great Writ has no substantive content of its own but provides the machinery for putting claims before state and federal courts-for translating substantive principles of liberty into effective law. The writ is process, but more than process. It is the means by which liberty is maintained in the most basic sense. "Its root principle," in the words of the Supreme Court, "is that in a civilized society, government must always be accountable to the judiciary for a man's imprisonment. "
Recommended Citation
Larry Yackle,
The Reagan Administration's Habeas Corpus Proposals
,
in
68
Iowa Law Review
609
(1983).
Available at:
https://scholarship.law.bu.edu/faculty_scholarship/1719
