Martial Law

MARTIAL LAW CAN BE defined as the imposition of rule over civilians by military authorities during an emergency. A broader definition comes from the British Wikipdia reference: “Martial law is instituted most often when it becomes necessary to favor the activity of military authorities and organs, usually for urgent unforeseen needs, and when the normal institutions of justice either cannot function or could be deemed too slow or too weak for the new situation, i.e. due to war or civil disorder, in occupied territory, or after a coup d'etat. The need to preserve the public order during an emergency is the essential goal of martial law. Usually martial law reduces some of the personal rights ordinarily granted to the citizen, limits the length of the trial processes, and prescribes more severe penalties than ordinary law. In many countries martial law prescribes the death penalty for certain crimes, even if ordinary law doesn't contain that crime in its system.”

As a militaristic form of government that often curtails if not outright eliminates civil liberties, it is on the hard-right, autocratic side of the political spectrum. The best course for discussing this controversial subject is within the British and American experiences from which the concept of martial law derived.

By the reign of Queen Elizabeth I (1558–1603), the use of armed force by the monarch had become severely circumscribed to times of armed rebellion or in the case of foreign invasion, as with the Spanish Armada in 1588. Indeed, during this period, except for bodies of mercenaries, the trained bands of militia, and the royal bodyguards wearing the red rose of Elizabeth's Tudor family, there really was no armed force in England. Henry VIII, her father, who had died in 1547, had completed the subjugation of the mighty feudal lords [Page 752]begun by his father, Henry VII (Tudor), when he became king in 1485.

During Elizabeth's reign, she had come to accept ruling in conjunction with the emerging parliament, which represented the growing middle class in the prosperous Tudor age. However, at her death in 1603, the crown passed to James I, who, as previous ruler of Scotland, had been used to a more autocratic rule. With Scotland generally a poorer country than England, no assertive middle class had really arisen to serve as a counter to excessive royal authority. This led to a continuing controversy in James's reign, with Sir Edward Coke becoming the leading parliamentarian opponent of James's autocratic conception of kingship. James, however, was astute enough to govern (if grudgingly) with Parliament rather than lose his new throne.