How long can Americans live in a state of emergency? By Henry Gass (CS Monitor) / May 29 2020
What constitutes an emergency and what becomes a new normal? That’s the question being weighed as the coronavirus crisis tests American civil liberties.
Civil liberties are a cornerstone of American democracy, but nothing tests those liberties quite like a major crisis.
Every crisis poses distinct threats and requires distinct responses. But throughout America’s history, restricting civil liberties in some way has frequently been part of the response.
In the interests of security, people have often been willing to surrender liberties during a crisis and in its aftermath. The state has also used crises as a justification to forcibly restrict citizens’ liberties, such as the notorious internment of Japanese Americans during World War II.
The coronavirus pandemic represents the latest test of civil liberties, and it’s testing these liberties in unprecedented ways, even as the U.S. death count passed 100,000 this week.
“What is different about this crisis is both the invisibility of the adversary and the time frame in which it’s unfolding,” says Meryl Chertoff, executive director of the Project on State and Local Government Policy and Law at the Georgetown University Law Center.
“We need to be guided by science, but we need to be careful in what we are willing to accept in an emergency, because rights once given up can be very difficult to bring back again,” she adds.
While there has been recent progress on developing treatments and a vaccine, it’s still unclear how long the pandemic is going to last, and thus how long restrictions on personal liberties may be asked of citizens. Tracking and eliminating the virus will likely raise new civil rights concerns as well.
Continue to article: https://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Justice/2020/0529/How-long-can-Americans-live-in-a-state-of-emergency
