FOREWORD
The use of emergency power in a democracy raises many questions relative to the constitutional basis for its authorization and the manner of its exercise. If used too little and too late a democratic state might be destroyed when the proper use of the emergency power possibly could have saved it. If used arbitrarily and capriciously, its use could degenerate into the worst form of dictatorship.
As a boy I was the chauffeur for a country doctor. One day while driving to see a patient who was gravely ill, the doctor opened his medicine chest and pointed to a glass vial containing morphine. “That drug,” he said, “is the most potent medicine in my chest but requires great skill in prescribing. Used properly it relieves pain and suffering. Used improperly it makes animals of men.” Emergency power bears to government the same general relationship of morphine to man. Used properly in a democratic state it never supplants the constitution and the statutes but is restorative in nature. Used improperly it becomes the very essence of tyranny.
By reference to particular statutes and specific instances this volume affords a graphic picture of the broad extent to which emergency power has been employed by the United States government in recent years. Many will view this development with alarm for the many instances of its use make a lengthy list. Military emergency today is but one type of national emergency. Catastrophes and economic emergencies may also require the exercise of this type of power. Indeed, its use in this day and time has been so frequent that the very term “emergency” is being “shorn of meaning.”
In the present volume the authors describe and comment upon the use of emergency power in the United States since 1933. It is their contention that the use of emergency power was contemplated and provided for in the Constitution. The law also provides restraints upon its use. As Professor McIlwain has concluded, the proper test of constitutionalism is the existence of adequate processes for keeping government responsible. It is comforting to know that these processes exist within our government. The primary requirement of all Americans, then, is to keep government responsible and within these limitations, for only when this is done can emergency power be justified under the law of the land.
The always present danger is that emergency power may be used by an officer or an agency of the government in order to have its own way when constitutional or other legal restrictions might irritate or interfere. This danger can be lessened by the selection of good governmental personnel, but removed to a greater degree by the enforcement of these constitutional and statutory limitations which are made effective at times by resort to judicial review.
Readers will be indebted to the authors for this first exhaustive account of the actual use of emergency power by the United States government since 1933. The restraint on the freedom of the individual, the regulation of private enterprise, the control of communications are but some of the topics that receive minute and careful treatment. Some readers will be concerned with the frequency of the resort to emergency power and will view with uneasiness, as does this writer, the possible curtailment of individual rights. Yet the authors would be the first to agree with the statement that, “Freedom and civil liberties, far from being incompatible with security, are vital to our national strength.” Security and rights are here made interdependent. Others will take satisfaction in the flexibility of the United States government that can maintain its democratic character and still have the means of preserving its existence under the tremendous pressure of a world war and periods of economic crises. Irrespective of attitude, the present volume is a telling account of the manner in which the government of the United States has been made adaptable under the Constitution to the problems and exigencies of the modern world.
Robert S. Rankin
Washington, D. C.