Does a Duly Elected President Have Authority to Act for National Security?

The topic of discussion for this Constitution Monday concerns constitutional authority for Presidents of the United States to protect national security. John D. O’Connor published an article at The Blaze that contained numerous examples of how previous presidents set the precedence for President Donald Trump. 

The first President of the United States to use this authority was George Washington. O’Conner wrote, “During the Whiskey Rebellion, President George Washington used force to suppress dissent without formal wartime authorization, arresting rebels without warrants.” Today’s liberal attorneys and judges would have gone crazy when Washington “ordered door-to-door searches and forcibly arrested suspected rebels without warrants.”

Abraham Lincoln was another former President of the United States to use this presidential power when he ended slavery in Confederate-held states. His 1863 Emancipation Proclamation remains an honored document, and Juneteenth is celebrated on June 19 to commemorate “the day in 1865 when enslaved people in Confederate-held Texas learned” about Lincoln’s proclamation.

The same legal reasoning that ended slavery also supports a president’s authority to remove foreign nationals designated as domestic terrorists. President Donald Trump has the constitutional power to act in the interest of national security by deporting those who threaten the country.

Lawyers and judges study statutes and decide cases, but they rarely confront the true scope of executive power. The Constitution designates the president as commander in chief, but it provides little detail on the extent of that authority….

President Trump does not need to justify his actions under the much-criticized Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798. Instead, he should invoke the same principle that underlies Juneteenth: the federal government’s power to secure liberty by enforcing the law and protecting the nation.

At the time of the Civil War, slaves were considered the property of their owners, and the Fifth Amendment dictated that the government could not emancipate them without due process and just compensation paid to their owners.

Additionally, the execrable 1857 Dred Scott v. Sandford decision and the Fugitive Slave Act reinforced legal support for slavery.

Despite those legal obstacles, Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, freeing slaves only in the Confederate states at war with the Union. Those in Maryland, Delaware, Kentucky, and Missouri remained enslaved because their states were not at war with the country.

As a skilled lawyer, Lincoln understood that his national security powers, implied within his role as commander in chief, superseded constitutional rights in times of war. He did not seek congressional approval, compensate slaveholders, or seek the approval of the courts. In essence, when we celebrate Juneteenth, we implicitly acknowledge broad presidential national security powers.

O’Connor shared other examples to support Washington’s handling of the Whiskey Rebellion and Lincoln’s freeing of the slaves. He said that these examples “demonstrate that national security concerns can, at times, take precedence over constitutional protections.”

How does this apply to President Trump’s deportation policy? As commander in chief, he has determined that the Tren de Aragua and MS-13 gangs pose a national security threat. He classified these groups as terrorist organizations, recognizing that they entered the United States with organized criminal intent….

We elect the president to make tough national security decisions, not to be second-guessed by judges from another branch of government. The limits of this power remain open to debate, however. While courts may take a restrictive view, the subject is rarely taught in law schools or settled in case law.

Historical and legal precedent suggest that when national security is at stake, terrorists are not entitled to lawyers or pre-deportation hearings. As counterintuitive as it may seem, Juneteenth itself sets a precedent. Again, slaveholders were not granted due process hearings before ethe Emancipation Proclamation, nor did they receive Fifth Amendment compensation for the loss of enslaved labor.

When dealing with foreign criminal organizations, we should not analyze these disputes through the lens of antiseptic legal theory. National security demands a more hardheaded approach. As the saying goes, eternal vigilance is the price of liberty – swift deportations may be part of that price.