The last work of Abraham Lincoln’s law of war expert Francis Lieber was long considered lost—until Will Smiley and John Fabian Witt discovered it in the National Archives. Lieber’s manuscript on emergency powers and martial law addresses important contemporary debates in law and political philosophy and stands as a significant historical discovery.

As a key legal advisor to the Lincoln White House, Columbia College professor Francis Lieber was one of the architects and defenders of Lincoln’s most famous uses of emergency powers during the Civil War. Lieber’s work laid the foundation for rules now accepted worldwide. In the years after the war, Lieber and his son turned their attention to the question of emergency powers. The Liebers’ treatise addresses a vital question, as prominent since 9/11 as it was in Lieber’s lifetime: how much power should the government have in a crisis? The Liebers present a theory that aims to preserve legal restraint, while giving the executive necessary freedom of action.

Smiley and Witt have written a lucid introduction that explains how this manuscript is a key discovery in two ways: both as a historical document and as an important contribution to the current debate over emergency powers in constitutional democracies.

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Yes, you can access To Save the Country by Francis Lieber, G. Norman Lieber, Will Smiley in PDF and/or ePUB format, as well as other popular books in Law & Legal History. We have over one million books available in our catalogue for you to explore.

Information

Publisher

Yale University Press

Year

2019

ISBN

9780300245189

Edition

Topic

Law

Subtopic

Legal History

Index

Law

Contents
Acknowledgments
Editors’ Note on the Text
Introduction
Military and Martial Law Distinguished
The Mutiny Act. Military Law
Martial Law in English History
Views of Early English Authorities
Acts of Parliament, Recognizing the Legality of Martial Law
Wall’s Case, and the Demerara, Ceylon, and Jamaica Cases
Martial Law in U.S. History
Has Martial Law Jurisdiction of Treason?
Appendix Francis Lieber’s Annotated Lieber Code
Index