Requisites for a Valid Declaration of Martial Law

Social Text, 2021

1 How would a 19 year old write a reaction paper about a martial law during the Marcos Regime? When what's published on books and what's said by people during those times are different. It's like divina comedia. Books tell us Paradiso and people who are victimized during those times tell us Inferno? I have no idea of what to write. I came up to the idea of asking my father about the two faces of Martial Law, I was referring and expecting it to be the good and bad. Surprisingly and intelligently he answered: "There's no good face during the Martial Law. The two faces of Martial Law is Authoritarianism and Torture and Murder."

The High Court of Australia has long struggled with the constitutional status of military tribunals established to hear disciplinary charges against service personnel. The Court's judgments reveal three distinct theories on this issue. The first view holds that military tribunals exercise judicial power, but not 'the judicial power of the Commonwealth' within the meaning of s 71 of the Constitution. The second view holds that the power in question is not judicial power at all for constitutional purposes. The third view holds that the power is 'the judicial power of the Commonwealth', but can be exercised by courts martial under a limited exception to the rules set out in Chapter III of the Constitution. The first view dominated the High Court's reasoning until Lane v Morrison (2009) 239 CLR 230, where the judges endorsed the second view. This article contends that the first and second views pose insuperable difficulties when placed in their broader constitutional context. The authors therefore argue for the third interpretation. They further argue that the constitutional basis for the third view strongly implies that military tribunals may only exercise jurisdiction over offenses by military personnel that relate to service discipline.

2023

This is the third of the “Essential Truths” series about the legacy of Martial Law in the Philippines. First, we examine human rights in the Philippines and its state before the declaration of martial law. Prior to Martial Law, a robust human rights and social justice system had already been in place—embedded in the 1935 Constitution, various pronouncements by the Supreme Court, and by virtue of the Philippine State’s assent to international human rights obligations. The subsequent declaration of martial law rolled back protections for human rights through the exercise of unbridled presidential power. We then look at the historical record—found in judicial decisions, domestic reparations processes, and civil society documentation—of the human rights abuses resulting from Martial Law. This is a contribution to the current discussion on the state of human rights during the Martial Law period of 1972 to 1986. We aim to clarify the historical revisionist claims that there were no proven human rights abuses during the regime of Ferdinand E. Marcos.

Texas A&M Law Review

The Insurrection Act allows the president to domestically deploy and utilize the federal standing army and state militias to perform functions normally performed by domestic law enforcement. The president can invoke the Act when circumstances make it impracticable to enforce domestic law by normal means, when the execution of the law is obstructed such that it deprives citizens of rightful legal protections, or upon the request of a state. Under the current version of the Act, the president possesses the sole and absolute discretion to determine when it is invoked during the two former instances above. When invoked, the Act provides broad and largely undefined authority for the president to act. This Comment reviews the history behind the passage of the Insurrection Act and follows the subsequent amendments to the contemporary version. It argues that Congress and the Supreme Court have failed to provide adequate checks on the president’s domestic military power, to determine the sou...

Indian constitution is a unique document, which enable an individual to grow in his fullest extent. Similarly, it gave a sense of unity and integrity within the society. The preamble of our constitution suggests basic ideals and aspirations, which are necessary to achieve the objective of our constitution. Before independence, it was only a dream to live in a society, free from all kinds of inequality and deprivation. A long struggle of independence gave us a sense to abrogate all kinds of social, political and economic evils. Therefore, constitutional assembly had been adopted the preamble after the long deliberation.

Indian Journal of Public Administration, 2001

BEFORE THE sad denouement of partition of the country had unfolded and became afait accompli, the constitution-makers had conceived to frame the Constitution on the strict pattern of federalism. Now it came loom large into the eyes that if the fissiparous tendencies , relently masquerading on the political scene, were not curbed and contained the nefarious trend, set in by the creation of Pakistan, would prove only a thin adage to the wedge and would take it to gargantuan proportions of complete dismemberment of the country. This diabolical and disastrous trend unleashed by forces of heterodoxy, going to the limits of intransigence and alienation and subsisting on the grounds of caste, community, language and region, often coinciding with territorial boundaries, was an imminent threat to the territorial integrity of the country. If this excruciating denouement, which had unhinged the nation from its very moorings with the creation of Pakistan, had to be dissipated, the federal element of the Constitution had to be diluted to the extent necessitated by the exigency of keeping the country-one and united. Dictated by their saviour-faire and ingenuity, the Constitution-makers made a departure from the theory and practice of the federal system lest the fissiparous forces should succeed in cocking a snook at the success of the Constitution. Of all the exceptions, making for the deviations from the ideals of federalism, the most important was the provision contained in Article 356. It envisaged the suspension of state automony and the imposition of President's rule when the constitutional machinery in state was broken down. Since it was a drastic remedy, making both the federal and parliamentary bases of the constitution to yield and brook the dilution of their ethos, it was intended that this extraordinary remedy should be called into operation in rarest of rare occasions when parliamentary remedies had failed to redeem the situation. 1 In a parliamentary system every crisis of whatever dimension and complexity 1 Dr. Ambedkar said, "If at all they are brought into operation, I hope the President, who is endowed with these powers; will take proper precautions before actually suspending the administration of the provinces. I hope the first thing he would do is to issue a warning to the province that had erred , that the things are not happening in the way in which they were intended to happen in the Constitution. If that warning fails, the second thing for him to do wilt be to order an election allowing the people of the provim:e to settle matters by themselves. It is only when these two remedies fail that he would resort to this article. i•(eA. Deb., Vol.ix.pl (7).