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Wall Street Journal

A Poor Presidential Precedent on Due Process

In 'Abe Lincoln's Reservations About Judicial Rule' (Letters, April 9), Robert DiNino invokes regrettable actions taken by Abraham Lincoln during the Civil War as justification for President Trump to defy court orders barring his deportation of immigrants to a Salvadoran prison. In doing so, he effectively argues for monarchy unbounded by the rule of law. Any student of history must understand that this path leads to tyranny and ruin. One can respect Lincoln's heroic struggle to preserve the Union and eradicate slavery while still realizing that he made mistakes. Among them was his unilateral suspension of habeas corpus to imprison critics even in the face of a court decision prohibiting him from doing so. Just as national security was used to justify that mistake, it was also used to justify Franklin Roosevelt's internment of Japanese Americans and Harry Truman's seizure of America's steel mills.