Martial law is an extremely vague term; it does not have any conventional understanding whatsoever. Typically, though, it denotes a privilege of the military to displace civilian authority. The phenomenon has been authorized on a number of occasions; in total, there were 68 precedents in US history.

Nevertheless, it certainly lacks clarity because The Constitution fails to even mention it, and it has never been defined by any acts of Congress. Although, it should be noted that the Supreme Court has, in fact, considered it occasionally, however inconsistent and vague these passages may seem. The latest precedent we have dates back to 1942.

The Latest Precedent

The incident that took place in 1942 in Hawaii is highly unprecedented. The territory had been subdued to the military ever since the battle of Pearl Harbor on the decline of 1941. All the life on the island, from infrastructure to the judicial system, obeyed martial law. Being a convicted criminal and a victim of chance, Harry White, a dealer, was judged without a jury with a verdict of five years imprisonment on the accusation of embezzlement.

What is interesting about his case is how it illustrates the work of martial law in wartime, when it is achievable to refuse all the motions and pass judgment only after five days – a situation unprecedented for peacetime law.

The Essence of Martial Law

To begin understanding the phenomenon of martial law, we need to consider three types of cases:

• The main use of martial law is said to be applied in events like Hurricane Katrina. Armed forces are known to have helped civilian authorities on the basis of so-called “non-law enforcement” purposes. In 2005, they sent helicopters to find the injured, dealing with the aftermath of the disaster.
• What happens rather rarely is military aid in “law enforcement” issues. The latest studied precedent, not counting the recent BLM events, is the riot suppression in Los Angeles in 1992.
• The last and the least frequent type of case is when martial law takes military control over the civilian government. That is exactly what happened in Honolulu in 1941.

Martial Law Today

Nowadays, the military privileges concerning the issue are strictly controlled by the Supreme Court. What it means is that criminals held in custody by the military now have a right to send a petition and ask to be released. Having received the request, the court should consider the issue, judging if the declaration and the particular actions of the armed forces were constitutionally justified.

For instance, were the military to arrest and hold a suspect in custody, their actions can be reviewed by federal law and subjected to investigation for violation of the Constitution and excess of the martial law authorized powers.