Martial Law

Abstract

The rights already treated of in the foregoing chapter, as for example the right to personal freedom or the right to free expression of opinion, do not, it may be between suggested, properly belong to the province of constitutional law at all, but form part either of private law strictly so called, or of the ordinary criminal law, Thus A’s right to personal freedom is, it may be said, only the right of A not to be assaulted, or imprisoned, by X, or (to look at the same thing from another point of view) is nothing else than the right of A, if assaulted by X, to bring an action against X, or to have X punished as a criminal for the assault. Now in this suggestion there lies an element of important truth, yet it is also undoubted that the right to personal freedom, the right to free discussion, and the like, appear in the forefront of many written constitutions, and are in fact the chief advantages which citizens hope to gain by the change from a despotic to Chapter a constitutional form of government. VIII.

See Forsyth, Cases and Opinions in Constitutional Law (1869), ch. vi, and Appendix; Stephen, History of the Criminal Law (1883), vol. i, pp. 201–216; The King v. Pinney (1832) 5 Car. & P. 254; K. & L. 418; The Queen v. Vincent (1839) 9 Car. & P. 91; The Queen v. Neale (1839) 9 Car. & P. 431; Keir & Lawson, Cases in Constitutional Law (4th ed., 1954), pp. 421–434, especially for later Irish cases; Law Quarterly Review, vol. xviii (1902), pp. 117–151, for four articles on the subject.