Talk:Ex parte Merryman

Untitled
I amended the summary by excerpting directly from the case (quoted sections in bold):

"Held, that the petitioner was entitled to be set at liberty and discharged immediately from confinement, upon the grounds following: 1. That the president, under the constitution of the United States, cannot suspend the privilege of the writ of habeas corpus, nor authorize a military officer to do it. 2. That a military officer has no right to arrest and detain a person not subject to the rules and articles of war, for an offence against the law of the United States, except in aid of the judicial authority, and subject to its control; and if the party be arrested by the military, it is the duty of the officer to deliver him over immediately to the civil authority, to be dealt with according to law. [Approved in Re Kemp, 16 Wis. 367.]"

This quotation replaced notations that only Congress was authorized to suspend Habeas Corpus, as this is implied by the prohibition on the executive branch and can otherwise be explained in the main description of the case. It also replaced the note that this holding applied even in times of war or other emergencies. This context is somewhat implied by the time and circumstances noted in the summary and in any event are not necessary qualification for applying the holding.

If this holding only applied in times of war or emergency, then the wartime/emergency context would of necessity be included in the summary.

The purpose of my edit was to provide the all-important holdings/rules of law up front. Given the relevance of this case in the contemporary legal challenges to the Bush administration's use of military tribunals, the actual language of the case is all the more important.

Relative of Merryman
A "Joseph P. Merryman" served as the Baltimore City rep to the Constitutional Convention of 1867 when the pro-slavery croud came back into political power. Anyone know if a relative to this John Merryman? --Noitall 05:28, July 21, 2005 (UTC)

Joseph P Merryman was a distant relation to John Merryman. Joseph P Merryman was the son of George Merryman (1811-1885) and Elizabeth E H Austin. The Grandson of Joseph Merryman(1760-1829)and Eleanor Gorsuch of Clover Hill in Baltimore County. He was the great grandson of Joseph Merryman (1726-1799)of Clover Hill. Joseph Merryman (1726-1799) was the youngest son of John Merryman and Martha Bowen of Clover Hill (Clover Hill was a tract of land known as Merryman's Lot, the tract was granted to Charles Merryman the father of John in 1682. The name Clover Hill was given in 1714 and the estate now stands on the corner of university parkway and charles street in baltimore city. The present house was built in 1778/9 by Joseph Merryman(1726-1799) and his son Joseph (1760-1829). The property passed out of the Merryman family in 1869 and is now the home to the Episcopal Bishop of Baltimore.)John Merryman and Martha Bowen eldest son was John Merryman (1703-1774), John had a son John and a daughter Elizabeth. John Merryman the son had a son named Nicholas Merryman of Hereford farm who was the father of John Merryman of Hayfields from ex parte Merryman. Elizabeth Merryman maried John Gorsuch and had a daughter Eleanor Gorsuch (1774-1858) who married Joseph Merryman (1760-1829) of Clover Hill. Joseph P. Merryman (1840-1924/9) was related to John Merryman of Hayfields through both his grandfather and grandmother. Hayfields has since been sold out of the Merryman family and today decendants of John Merryman of Hayfields live on a farm called "Clover Hill".

NPOV
This article seems to take a very Lincoln-apologist stance on his suspension of the writ of habeas corpus. Perhaps conflicting historical views need be involved? --68.52.68.18 04:26, 9 March 2006 (UTC)

Heck, I'd say exactly the opposite. The article is filled with all sorts of indignation supporting Taney over Lincoln, so I added a neutrality tag to it. 67.188.29.176 05:45, 5 April 2007 (UTC)

There may be an answer on Wikipedia, at Hamdi v. Rumsfeld under the subsection entitled, "The Court's Opinion" and under the subsection entitled, "Effect on non-citizen detainees". The text refers to Justice O'Conner, who wrote a plurality opinion reflecting her opinion and that from Chief Justice Rehnquist and Justices Breyer and Kennedy. To summarize: Justice O'Conner refered to "...the three-prong test of legal principals in Mathews v. Eldridge", limiting the applicable due process. The Wikipedia page also says that her wording included reference to an "alleged enemy combatant" saying this came from The Geneva Convention and included reference to the "... Court's holding in the case of Rasul v. Bush... " which was delivered the same day. The page implies that the plurality opinion agreed with the government's actions provided they were permitted a hearing to determine their status as an illegal enemy combatant.

This page: "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AR_190-8" refers to AR 190-8 which also addresses much of the law pertaining to this. The page ends saying the detainess were released on June 4, 2007 on the premise that there had been no determination of whether or not Omar Khadr and Salim Ahmed Hamdan were illegal enemy combatants as opposed simply to being enemy combatants. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.33.225.3 (talk) 03:57, 1 May 2008 (UTC)


 * I don't really think this section has NPOV problems. It's fairly anti-Lincoln in sum, but I think that's perfectly fair, since he was (according to the Supreme Court) violating the Constitution. I say this as someone with a generally very high opinion of Lincoln. I vote pull the NPOV tag and leave the article as-is. jackbrown (talk) 06:46, 19 June 2008 (UTC)

This section of the article is clearly not neutral. Wording such as "Taney went by the lawbooks" and "raged" are no where near neutral. How else is a judge supposed to rule, other than by the law? At the very least this line of logic touches on the wholly separate debate of how law and the constitution should be interpreted. "Raged" assumes (probably rightly so) that Taney was angry at Lincoln's actions, but more neutral words such as "strongly worded opinion" or "pointed" would be much more neutral. The phrase "fiery language" falls in the same category, and should probably be edited as well. In addition, the author twice editorializes the court's decision when they say "The clash between Taney and the various generals who essentially represented Lincoln is a good example of the conflict between idealism and pragmatism that characterizes much of the debate on this topic" and " The real question, which Taney addressed, was whether or not it was practically permissible for a President to take such actions". These editorializations should be removed. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.197.37.99 (talk) 06:07, 2 January 2009 (UTC)

Broken Links
I don't know if people check up on these things, but the links to the Poole and Rehnquist books both lead to dead ends.

140.247.175.126 06:22, 4 May 2006 (UTC)Drazba

Ok found one for merryman

Should be a little more on the political background
Through his actions in Dred Scott etc., Taney had already managed to destroy any respect for himself among a very large number of people in the North/Union years before Merryman -- and many people thought that he remained behind on the Supreme Court (instead of fleeing south) because he had the traitorous intention of conducting malicious judicial vandalism and sabotage operations, in order to hinder the North's war efforts. That's why Lincoln suffered very little political damage from Merryman -- just about everybody who supported Taney was already a political opponent to Lincoln.... AnonMoos (talk) 23:01, 29 January 2011 (UTC)

citing Andrew Jackson before him
This really needs to be explained. I don't see anything in the Andrew Jackson article that would shed light on this, either. Anyone know what this is about? 111.233.10.80 (talk) 13:37, 9 July 2011 (UTC)


 * Jackson famously simply ignored a supreme court decision on Indian land rights; don't know if it's directly relevant to Merryman (Worcester v. Georgia suggests legally not really)... AnonMoos (talk) 06:17, 11 March 2012 (UTC)

Unsourced sentence
This Wikipedia article says: "Its legal argument holding that Congress alone may suspend the writ is noted for reiterating the opinion of John Marshall and the court in Ex parte Bollman and was recently restated by the Supreme Court in Hamdi v. Rumsfeld." No source is provided. So it either needs a "citation needed" tag or should be removed.Anythingyouwant (talk) 19:12, 21 June 2015 (UTC)
 * I inserted some footnotes and reorganized this material.Anythingyouwant (talk) 20:25, 21 June 2015 (UTC)

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Expanding and clarified one paragraph is Decision section
I expanded this paragraph to include details about why some have said that "Taney was a partisan democrat that gave a biased ruiling" and why others have said that he was only following "well established law. I clarified that last statement about the Supreme Court not addressing the issue of haebus corpus so the true controversy is understood: the court decision about haebus corpus was established by tanners ruling and is currently the standard to this day. The controversy comes from Lincoln directly violating Taney's ruling. Lincoln suffered no legal consequence as result nor did the army who followed his orders because the court was powerless to enforce their own ruling if the president declined to do so and the court never said if this establishes a precedent or not.

''Critics of Taney believe he was politically a partisan Democrat and an opponent of Lincoln and that his politics infected his decision in Merryman. There is precedent for this criticism because the Taney Court should have dismissed the Dred Scott case after finding "that the Court had no jurisdiction over Dred Scott's case because he was not a citizen" but instead choose to rule that the Missouri Compromise was unconstitutional despite that issue not even being litigated before the court in a politically partisan ruling that favored the now rebellious slave holding states in the south that Taney was from. In this case, Taney's decision to deny General Cadwalader time to consult the president and dispatch a US Marshal to arrest him during a Civl War and bring him before his court demonstrated partisan corruption on Taney's part. On the other hand, partisan Democrat or not, Taney's Merryman opinion was arguably a simple application of well established law and consulting the president was irrelevant for General Cadwalader because Lincoln didn't have jurisdiction. Lincoln was also very critical of Taney because of his ruling in the Dred Scott case. The case became historic because not only did President Lincoln refuse to comply with the courts ruling, which does have precedent, he directly violated it by continuing the suspension without congressional approval. The truth of the matter has never been addressed by the Supreme Court of the United States nor has it squarely determined if the President has any independent authority to suspend habeas corpus or if any precedent was set by the president intentionally violating the courts ruling without legal consequence.'' -- 21:16, 15 October 2020 Samsongebre


 * If anyone was going to stand up for civil rights in the North or Union during the Civil War, then for practical political reasons, it could not be Taney -- since Taney had an extremely toxic reputation among many in the North after Dred Scott, and any decision he made to restrain the powers of the U.S. government would have been interpreted by large numbers of people as a spiteful act of treason, intended to help the Confederate cause by means of malicious judicial sabotage of the U.S. war effort. No judgment on issues of this nature could be neutral or a mere "application of well-established law" in the eyes of many in the North if Taney was behind it.  Lincoln's personal opposition to the Dred Scott ruling didn't really matter for Merryman -- it was the opinion of large number of northerners about the ruling and Taney personally which enabled Lincoln to defy Taney over Merryman.  See the  section above... AnonMoos (talk) 06:12, 16 October 2020 (UTC)