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<\/a>So far as I\u2019m aware, I\u2019ve met Brent Ward<\/a>, but just once. \u00a0It was decades ago, and I\u2019m sure that he wouldn\u2019t remember meeting me<\/em> at all. \u00a0His parents served as special representatives of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints<\/a> in Cairo, Egypt, while I was studying there. \u00a0If I\u2019m not mistaken, he visited Cairo while they were serving. \u00a0Now, he has just published an article in the Deseret News<\/em> with which I whole-heartedly agree: \u00a0\u201cOpinion: Wanted \u2014 a just Utah: ICE\u2019s ambition to incarcerate 7,000-10,000 detainees in an 833,000-square-foot warehouse deserves careful consideration\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n I will be writing today to my representatives in Utah state government, in the House of Representatives, and in the Senate of the United States. \u00a0For me, this isn\u2019t a partisan political issue. \u00a0It\u2019s a matter of simple human rights and of upholding our divinely-inspired Constitution.<\/p>\n In 1854, Charles W. Penrose, a future counselor in the First Presidency of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, was still serving as a missionary in his native England. \u00a0He wanted to emigrate, but continual calls to Church service had prevented his leaving. \u00a0So he wrote a poem that expressed his yearning and that has since become one of our beloved hymns:<\/p>\n 1. O ye mountains high, where the clear blue sky 2. Though the great and the wise all thy beauties despise, 3. In thy mountain retreat, God will strengthen thy feet; 4. Here our voices we\u2019ll raise, and we\u2019ll sing to thy praise, Even growing up in California, that description of Utah as the \u201csacred home of the prophets of God\u201d resonated powerfully with me. \u00a0I still feel it, tattered though the reality of Utah can often be with the ordinariness of trade and politics and pollution and the realities of mortal limitations and flaws, to say nothing of media-trumpeted \u201csecret lives\u201d and \u201creal housewives.\u201d \u00a0I am, I suppose, a kind of \u201cMormon Zionist.\u201d \u00a0And, on this specific issue, I intend to take a stand in defense of that ideal.<\/p>\n Nearly a year ago, reports circulated in the news media that the Trump administration was considering formal suspension of the right of habeas corpus<\/em>, at least for some. \u00a0See, for example,<\/p>\n And this Wall Street Journal<\/em> opinion piece by William A. Galston<\/a> (in whose company, for what little it may be worth, I once spent a week at a small seminar in M\u00e1laga, in the south of Spain, under the auspices of the Institute for American Values) is very much worth reading: \u00a0\u201cTrump\u2019s Habeas Corpus Threat:\u00a0No president, even Lincoln, has ever suspended the writ without Congress\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n Of course, the Trump administration is such a constantly swirling vortex of news and controversy \u2014 and the war in Iran is so front and center at the moment \u2014 that the matter of habeas corpus<\/em> has long since disappeared from the headlines and the front pages since then. \u00a0New controversies have largely replaced it. \u00a0But, so far as I\u2019m aware, there is no reason to believe that the idea of formally suspending one of the most venerable of constitutional rights has been dropped at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.<\/p>\n So I thought that I would mention a couple of items here that some readers of this blog might find of interest.<\/p>\n First, it\u2019s noteworthy that the late Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Antonin Scalia \u2014 the left\/right polar opposites on the Supreme Court of the United States during their still-recent tenures \u2014 agreed that everybody<\/em> within the borders of the United States of America, even non-citizens (and every citizen of the United States of America abroad), enjoys the protection of guaranteed constitutional rights, including the right to due process: \u00a0\u201cExtreme Opposites Agree.\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n Second, I cite (and I enthusiastically recommend) an interesting and even entertaining talk that was given by then-Elder Dallin H. Oaks of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles \u2014 some may recall the relevant fact that, before he was sustained as a prophet, seer, and revelator, he was a professor of law at the University of Chicago and, thereafter, a member of the Utah Supreme Court \u2014 on Monday, 23 September 2013, at the Historic Nauvoo Visitors\u2019 Center in Nauvoo, Illinois. \u00a0His remarks were delivered as part of a multi-day event that was co-sponsored by the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum and the Illinois Supreme Court Historic Preservation Commission. \u00a0On the following day, Tuesday 24 September 2012, a reenactment of Joseph Smith\u2019s habeas corpus<\/em> hearings was performed, followed by a panel discussion. \u00a0A similar reenactment and a similar panel discussion occurred on the campus of the University of Chicago about three weeks later. \u00a0(See \u201cApostle Speaks on Joseph Smith at Illinois Law Event.\u201d<\/a>)<\/p>\n Here is an excerpt from Elder Oaks\u2019s remarks on that occasion:<\/p>\n It is within the context of Joseph Smith\u2019s love of the Constitution that his understanding and use of the writ of habeas corpus must be examined. In a recent article in BYU Studies Quarterly, <\/em>Jeffrey Walker, who has been so helpful to me in the research and writing of this talk, summarized Joseph\u2019s use of habeas corpus:<\/p>\n During Joseph Smith\u2019s life he invoked the habeas corpus laws on several occasions: From seeking review of his incarceration in Liberty Jail to seeking approval for the charter for the City of Nauvoo (which included the right of the municipal court to hear writs of habeas corpus) to seeking review of his arrests during the various extradition efforts to return him to Missouri, Smith developed a keen understanding of the protections that habeas corpus afforded, and he needed that understanding. Joseph Smith believed, and accurately so, that if he were to be jailed in Illinois as he had been in Missouri, he would not survive his incarceration. It was in fact his jailing in Illinois that ended in his murder.<\/em><\/p>\n His passionate belief in habeas corpus can be heard in a speech he gave to thousands assembled at the grove just below the temple here in Nauvoo. After arriving to have a petition for habeas corpus heard the following morning by the Nauvoo Municipal Court over Missouri\u2019s third effort to have him extradited, he said:<\/p>\n The Constitution of the United States declares that the privilege of the writ of Habeas Corpus shall not be denied. Deny me the right of Habeas Corpus, and I will fight with gun, sword, cannon, whirlwind, and thunder, until they are used up like the Kilkenny cats . . . the benefits of the Constitution & laws are for all alike; & the great Eloheim has given me the privilege of having the benefits of the Constitution & the writ of Habeas Corpus.<\/em><\/p>\n Joseph Smith\u2019s intellectual understanding of the protections afforded by the writ of habeas corpus justifies admiration by any student of the law. Daniel H. Wells, then a non-Mormon justice of the peace in Hancock County and a personal friend of Joseph, said, \u201cI have been around lawmen all of my life. Joseph Smith was the best lawyer that I have ever known in my life.\u201d<\/p>\n [For the full text of Elder Oaks\u2019s 2013 speech, see \u201cBehind the Extraditions: Joseph Smith, the Man and the Prophet,\u00a0By Elder Dallin H. Oaks of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles\u201d<\/a>]<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Given President Oaks\u2019s position at the time of the cited remarks and his current position as the president of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, is it too political on my part to hope that my fellow members of the Church will take seriously his view of habeas corpus<\/em> \u2014 to say nothing of the view on the matter of the Prophet Joseph Smith himself?<\/p>\n The Constitution of the United States is, after all, expressly mentioned (and approved) in our canonical scriptures:<\/p>\n According to the laws and constitution of the people, which I have suffered to be established, and should be maintained for the rights and protection of all flesh, according to just and holy principles;<\/p>\n That every man may act in doctrine and principle pertaining to futurity, according to the moral agency which I have given unto him, that every man may be accountable for his own sins in the day of judgment.<\/p>\n Therefore, it is not right that any man should be in bondage one to another.<\/p>\n And for this purpose have I established the Constitution of this land, by the hands of wise men whom I raised up unto this very purpose, and redeemed the land by the shedding of blood. \u00a0(Doctrine and Covenants 101:77-80)<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n And please note that the Constitution is to be \u201cmaintained for the rights and protection of all<\/em> flesh\u201d (emphasis mine).<\/p>\n
\nArches over the vales of the free,
\nWhere the pure breezes blow and the clear streamlets flow,
\nHow I\u2019ve longed to your bosom to flee!
\nO Zion! dear Zion! land of the free,
\nNow my own mountain home, unto thee I have come;
\nAll my fond hopes are centered in thee.<\/p>\n
\nTo the humble and pure thou art dear;
\nTho the haughty may smile and the wicked revile,
\nYet we love thy glad tidings to hear.
\nO Zion! dear Zion! home of the free,
\nThough thou wert forced to fly to thy chambers on high,
\nYet we\u2019ll share joy and sorrow with thee.<\/p>\n
\nWithout fear of thy foes thou shalt tread;
\nAnd their silver and gold, as the prophets have told,
\nShall be brought to adorn thy fair head.
\nO Zion! dear Zion! home of the free,
\nSoon thy towers shall shine with a splendor divine,
\nAnd eternal thy glory shall be.<\/p>\n
\nSacred home of the prophets of God.
\nThy deliv\u2019rance is nigh; thy oppressors shall die;
\nAnd thy land shall be freedom\u2019s abode.
\nO Zion! dear Zion! land of the free,
\nIn thy temples we\u2019ll bend; all thy rights we\u2019ll defend;
\nAnd our home shall be ever with thee.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/a>\n
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