The weeds are my sweet spot, etymologically speaking, and so we’re wading in. The subject is a constitutional principle that came up in the news today.
In a Senate hearing, Kristi Noem, the head of Homeland Security in the Trump administration, was asked to define habeas corpus. She said, “Habeas corpus is a constitutional right that the president has to be able to remove people from this country.” The former governor of South Dakota thinks the Constitution gives the President the right to deport people, and she thinks that right is called habeas corpus.
Kristi Noem was a governor of a state, and she does not know the meaning of habeas corpus. A phrase which the founders put into the Constitution of the United States.
You don’t have to know Latin to know that habeas corpus is a citizen’s right, not a President’s right. A version appeared in the Magna Carta, an English charter of rights from 1215. That’s the Magna Carta. In 1215.
AI explains the concept like this: “A writ of habeas corpus is a judicial order forcing law enforcement authorities to produce a prisoner they are holding, and to justify the prisoner’s continued confinement.” People, in other words, that is, humans (that is, not necessarily US citizens) have the right to a public hearing notifying them of charges against them. The Constitution decrees that if you’re arrested, you’re entitled to a timely hearing, so that the court can evaluate the legality of your imprisonment.
Here come the weeds. The phrase is Latin, and if you know anything about Latin, you know it’s all about the endings. The verb habere means “to have.” The form habes means “you have.” But in the legal phrase, it’s spelled habeas. That a makes the verb subjunctive, a particular kind of subjunctive called iussive, meaning “command” or “order.” Habeas translated literally means “may you have” or “let you have.” It’s a let that’s more than a suggestion, as when your teachers used to say, “Let’s be quiet now.” They meant, “Be quiet!”
The direct object corpus means “body,” with its obvious English derivatives such as corpse, incorporate, corporal, and so on. The Constitution is not messing around. It’s telling law enforcement and the justice system that if you arrest someone, you have to produce that someone in court. A writ of habeas corpus says, “Let you have the body” in the courtroom. You can’t arrest someone and leave them to rot in a cell indefinitely without charges, without letting them come into court and to hear what they’re up against. Then the court can decide further steps.
I remember looking this phrase up many years ago and being startled at its simplicity and bluntness. Habeas corpus. Let you have the body. You must produce the living body of the prisoner in a courtroom.
The colonial British government didn’t have to produce a body before a judge. It had no obligation to give American colonists the right to a hearing. Neither do the modern governments of Russia, Saudi Arabia, or North Korea. People get sent off to prisons there and are never heard from again. No court ever evaluates trumped-up charges.
We have an administration proposing that we formally suspend habeas corpus, saying that from now on, it’s up to the government whether someone gets a hearing or not. As of now, some 50,000 immigrants are in detention in the US, without hearings. No one knows for sure how many people have already been deported to prisons in El Salvador and other countries, with no hearings and no notice and no legal representation. Habeas corpus is already being suspended.
Thoughts?
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2025/05/20/kristi-noem-habeas-corpus-definition-senate-hearing/83744183007/
