Page:Joseph Story, Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States (1st ed, 1833, vol III).djvu/216

 208 general method of proceedings on these writs to the true standard of law and liberty. That statute has been, in substance, incorporated into the jurisprudence of every state in the Union; and the right to it has been secured in most, if not in all, of the state constitutions by a provision, similar to that existing in the constitution of the United States. It is not without reason, therefore, that the common law was deemed by our ancestors a part of the law of the land, brought with them upon their emigration, so far, as it was suited to their circumstances; since it affords the amplest protection for their rights and personal liberty. Congress have vested in the courts of the United States full authority to issue this great writ, in cases falling properly within the jurisdiction of the national government.

§ 1336. It is obvious, that cases of a peculiar emergency may arise, which may justify, nay even require, the temporary suspension of any right to the writ. But as it has frequently happened in foreign countries, and even in England, that the writ has, upon various pretexts and occasions, been suspended, whereby persons apprehended upon suspicion have suffered a long imprisonment, sometimes from design, and sometimes, because they were forgotten, the right to suspend it is expressly confined to cases of rebellion or invasion, where the public safety may require it. A very just and wholesome restraint, which cuts down at a blow a fruitful means of oppression, capable of being abused in