Johnson v. Jones

Citations

• 44 Ill. 142

Syllabus

<p>1. Personal liberty—how a citizen may Toe deprived thereof—power of the President of the United States, in that regard. A citizen has a right to his personal liberty, except when restrained of it upon a charge of crime, and for the purpose of judicial investigation, or under the command of the law pronounced through a judicial tribunal.</p> <p>2. The President of the United States has no rightful power, in time of peace, to cause a marshal to arrest a citizen of one State, without process, and without any charge of crime legally preferred, and convey him to another State, and there imprison him, without judicial writ or warrant, in a military fortress.</p> <p>• 3. In time of war, any soldier has the right to arrest a belligerent engaged in acts of hostility toward the government, and lodge him in the nearest military prison, and to use such force as may be necessary for that purpose even unto death. This is the law of war.</p> <p>4. But the status of any person, as to the question of belligerency, depends upon his citizenship or nationality. A belligerent is a subject of the hostile power, and his character, in that regard, depends upon that of the community to which he belongs.</p> <p>5. So in the late war of the rebellion, the people of the rebel States were recognized as belligerents, but the citizens of the loyal States, resident and remaining therein, and not engaged in the war, were not belligerents or subject to arrest as prisoners of war, notwithstanding they may have been domestic plotters against the government, in full sympathy with the rebels and rendering them their moral co-operation and aid.</p> <p>6. Military law, as distinguished from martial law, consists of the rules prescribed for the government and discipline of troops, which apply only to persons in the military or naval service of the government, whereas martial law, when once established, applies alike to citizen and soldier.</p> <p>7. But martial law is in truth and reality no law, but me