by David Uberti

Created on: December 27, 2009   Last Updated: December 29, 2009

Shortly after the beginning of the Civil War in 1861, President Abraham Lincoln proclaimed radical policy changes to the American justice system. Along with declaring martial law, which gave the military control of administering justice, Lincoln suspended the Constitutional right to writs of habeas corpus. 

This effectively allowed the government to imprison suspects without the due process of law guaranteed in the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution.  Lincoln, although regarded as one of America’s heroes, drastically reduced the scope of justice to exclude suspected Confederate combatants and possible enemies of the state. 

Susan Opotow, a professor of sociology at the City University of New York, examined such events on November 13 during her talk at Northwestern University: “Looking Back at Past Injustice: Moral Exclusion and Societal Change”. Opotow’s arguments focused on the fundamental question of justice, one that is very simple yet easily debatable: Who counts? 

Her research focused on government actions during times of war, such as FDR’s exclusion of Japanese Americans from the justice system during World War II, and American race relations before the civil rights movement. 

In both cases, Opotow argues, the establishment’s fear of threat led it to narrow the scope of justice to exclude certain groups. As in the case of race relations before the 1960’s, African-American’s exclusion from the scope of justice rendered injustices (to African-Americans) normal and socially acceptable. Harm was normalized and rendered invisible. 

This type of behavior, although frowned upon, is quite common. During times of social and political strife, international or domestic, the scope of justice is narrowed to cater to exclude certain groups and cater to specific political goals. 

This issue is extremely prevalent given the United States’ ongoing involvement in the Middle East and its accompanying judicial scandals. After the terrorist attacks in New York and Washington in 2001, a nation-wide feeling of threat empowered the United States government to drastically shrink Americans’ civil liberties and dissolve any type of morality governing the judicial process. 

While the military response to the attacks was great, a more sinister battle was waged on our home soil. The Office of Legal Counsel to the President, spearheaded by lawyer John

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