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Ex Parte Milligan

Law case

Ex Parte Milligan, (1866), case in which the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the federal government could not establish military courts to try civilians except where civil courts were no longer functioning in an actual theatre of war.

Lambdin P. Milligan had been arrested in 1864, charged with aiding the Confederacy, conspiring to free Confederate prisoners, and inciting insurrection. Arrested in his Indiana home by the Union general in command of the state, Milligan had been active in a secret society friendly to the Confederate cause. He was tried by a military court established in Indiana under the authority of President Abraham Lincoln, found guilty, and sentenced to hang.

Milligan’s lawyers sought a writ of habeas corpus, contesting the constitutionality of the military trial. The case eventually reached the Supreme Court, which unanimously declared that the president had no power to set up military tribunals in secure areas where civil courts were functioning. A majority of the Court also declared that Congress, too, lacked such authority. Milligan, as a consequence, had been deprived of his constitutional right to trial by jury and was freed after 18 months in jail.

Radical Republicans denounced the decision and feared the impact it might have on their plans for military rule in the South throughout Reconstruction.

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