… is from pages 205-206 of Robert Higgs’s July 1987 Reason article titled “In the Name of Emergency,” as an expanded version of this article appears under the title “The Normal Constitution Versus the Crisis Constitution” in the superb 2004 collection of some of Bob’s essays, Against Leviathan:
Far from having their rights to life, liberty, and property upheld by the federal government, Americans have been routinely deprived of such rights under declarations of emergency and even by government emergency action absent such a declaration….
We will search the constitutional document in vain, however, for provisions relating to emergency powers. No such powers are mentioned. If the Framers intended the powers of federal officials or the rights of private citizens to be any different in national emergencies, it is curious that they neglected to express that intention….
