Inter arma enim silent leges
Inter arma enim silent leges is a Latin phrase that literally means "For among arms, the laws are silent" but is more popularly rendered as "In times of war, the law falls silent."
Ancient Rome
The aphorism was likely first written in these words by Cicero in his published oration Pro Milone, but Cicero's actual wording was Silent enim leges inter arma.
When Cicero used the phrase, politically-motivated
Other Latin writers used the expression like St. Jerome in Letter 126.
United States
:
- That the president ... cannot suspend the privilege of the writ of habeas corpus, nor authorize a military officer to do it.
- That a military officer has no right to arrest and detain a person not subject to the rules and articles of war ... except in aid of the judicial authority, and subject to its control.
The US government explicitly referred to the maxim in its argument in the case by remarking (with an additional reference to Cicero) that "these [amendments of the Bill of Rights], in truth, are all peace provisions of the Constitution and, like all other conventional and legislative laws and enactments, are silent amidst arms, and when the safety of the people becomes the supreme law."
The erosion of citizens' rights during
In its more modern usage, the phrase has become a watchword about the erosion of civil liberties during wartime. In the immediate wake of the
In 1998, Chief Justice William Rehnquist, in All the Laws but One: Civil Liberties in Wartime, suggested that "the least justified of the curtailments of civil liberty" were unlikely to be accepted by the courts in future wars: "It is neither desirable nor is it remotely likely that civil liberty will occupy as favored a position in wartime as it does in peacetime. But it is both desirable and likely that more careful attention will be paid by the courts to the basis for the government's claims of necessity as a basis for curtailing civil liberty.... The laws will thus not be silent in time of war, but they will speak with a somewhat different voice."
In 2004,
Many think it not only inevitable but entirely proper that liberty give way to security in times of national crisis that, at the extremes of military exigency, inter arma silent leges. Whatever the general merits of the view that war silences law or modulates its voice, that view has no place in the interpretation and application of a Constitution designed precisely to confront war and, in a manner that accords with democratic principles, to accommodate it.[1]
In fiction
The phrase was used as the title for a
See also
References
- ^ Antonin Scalia, dissenting opinion in Hamdi v. Rumsfeld (2004).
External links
- Cicero Pro Milone, at The Latin Library
- Declan McCullogh, "Why Liberty Suffers in Wartime", 24 September 2001
- Jerry Schwartz, AP, "Will the law be silent in a time of crisis?" 30 September 2001