Protecting Volunteer Firefighters and Emergency Responders Act of 2014

Floor Speech

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Mr. LEE. I thank my distinguished colleague, the senior Senator from Michigan, whose presence we will miss and whose leadership we have appreciated over the years.

Madam President, I have offered this amendment today, which is an amendment that was crafted several years ago by me and Senator Feinstein. We created this as a document that we originally called the Due Process Guarantee Act. Senator Feinstein and I had one objective with the Due Process Guarantee Act, which was to guarantee the right of the American people that while they exist, while they live from day to day on U.S. soil, they will be free from indefinite detention without trial, without their rights that are protected by our Constitution, without the rights we have come to associate with our habeas corpus guarantees and our other constitutional protections.

These are rights that we understand are inseparably connected with liberty and they long predated the existence of our Constitution and our Republic. They were so fundamental, in fact, that not only were they incorporated into our Constitution--this right to be free from a chance of being locked up by government indefinitely in prison, without trial, without counsel and so forth--they were discussed at length at our Constitutional Convention. They were discussed at length by members of our founding generation as they debated and discussed the merits of our Constitution.

Notably, in Federalist No. 84, James Madison referred to these rights, and he quoted a great luminary of that time--a luminary who is still a legal force to this day--Judge William Blackstone. He quoted a very meaningful excerpt from volume 1 of William Blackstone's ``Commentaries on the Laws of England,'' published in 1765.

I want to read briefly some of what he said there that is relevant to this day. He says these rights are very important; they are the right to be free from detention, from arbitrary indefinite detention. He says:

To bereave a man of life, or by violence to confiscate his estate, without accusation or trial, would be so gross and notorious an act of despotism, as must at once convey the alarm of tyranny throughout the whole kingdom. But confinement of the person, by secretly hurrying him to gaol, where his sufferings are unknown or forgotten; is a less public, a less striking, and therefore a more dangerous engine of arbitrary government. And yet sometimes, when the state is in real danger, even this may be a necessary measure. But the happiness of our constitution is----

And here he is referring, of course, to the British constitution at the time --that it is not left to the executive power to determine when the danger of the state is so great, as to render this measure expedient. For the parliament only, or legislative power, whenever it sees proper, can authorize the crown, by suspending the habeas corpus act for a short and limited time, to imprison suspected persons without giving any reason for so doing.

So in other words, he was referring to something contemplated and built into our constitutional structure as well, which is that, sure, there may be times of invasion, there may be times of national emergency, of an exigency so great, so threatening to the safety of the people that this kind of action might be warranted. But where that does happen, it has to happen by an express declaration by the legislative
body--that the right to habeas corpus is, in fact, being suspended.

I will conclude with this quote, where he says:

..... this experiment ought only to be tried in cases of extreme emergency; and in these the nation parts with its liberty for a while, in order to preserve it for ever.

What was true in William Blackstone's time remains true today. What was true during the founding era, remains true today. What was true at the time of the drafting and the ratification of our other constitutional protections, including those in the Fourth, Fifth and Sixth Amendments to the Constitution, remain true today. That is that we are a free people, and as a free people, we have come to expect certain rights that we have. By virtue of being Americans--Americans living on U.S. soil--we have the right to be free and to be free from this risk of indefinite detention without trial.

When those very rare circumstances might arise, as arose, for example, during the Civil War, where they cannot be allowed to stand, they may be suspended only by an act of Congress expressly suspending the habeas corpus protections we have come to rely on.

For this reason, Senator Feinstein and I put this bill together. I offer it up now as an amendment. I understand this motion has already been objected to, and I state my concerns with the objection.

I thank the Chair.

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